So you want to dive face first in the tangled, eccentric, all-around fantastic world of Icelandic music? You're in luck, because there's really only one place to start--the Iceland Airwaves music festival, in Reykjavik Nov 4-8, 2015.

"Iceland in November?" you squeak.



Heck yeah.

In true Icelandic fashion, Airwaves is set during some of Iceland's harshest weather--and longest nights--to celebrate the best of the local talent. It's designed as a showcase, and not just of the music. Airwaves separates the fans from the phonies.

Music Christmas

But every single one of the three Icelandic groups that I met with at CMJ's first ever Icelandic Showcase (Mammut, Fufanu, and DJ Flugvél og Geimskip) agree that the music is well worth a little chill.

"It's like music Christmas," explained Mammut vocalist, Katrína Mogensen. And she's not alone.



Each of the artists chimed in about the merry feeling and excitement they get from playing and attending the sprawling, eclectic festival. When asked how bands in the tight-knit, some would say "small" Icelandic music scene react to watching bands they routinely share stage space with, Fufanu front man, Kaktus Einarsson, seemed surprised by the question.



"We're just so into each other."

And he means it. Literally. "Our guitarist connects us to the hardcore scene," he continues, "and our drummer plays in a reggae band."



Steinunn Harðardóttir, the pixie wizard behind the turntables and drum samples of Dj Flugvel og Geimskip--translated as "Airplanes & Spaceships"--is another multi-band performer, appearing at Airwaves with three different bands. Probably the biggest departure from her ethereal DJ persona obsessed with space and evil cats is the rock three-piece, Skelkur í bringuhttps://www.facebook.com/skelkuribringu, which translates to "Terror."

Blurred Lines

That contrast is what makes Airwaves so great. It's a festival where bands and genres from all over the world collide in the long dark of the Icelandic winter. And the results are sometimes frantic, but always interesting.

Katrina from Mammut claims, "One Airwaves we played eight shows in a single day," an all too common feat during their 10-year Airwaves run. Steinunn played eleven shows at last year's festival, and she's scheduled for nine performances this November.

But prolific runs like that don't just happen. Festival manager and talent booker since 2010, Glimur Atlason would know.

According to Atlason, Airwaves' prolific performances stems from their simple three-point mission:

1. To put on a fantastic festival
2. To export Icelandic music
3. To promote tourism in the off-season

Amidst all the music, it's easy to forget that the Airwaves festival originally launched in an IcelandAir hangar in 1999 (get it, "Air" waves) as a way to capitalize on the (then) end of the tourist season in September. But even then, one of the four bands that played was Icelandic legends, The Sugarcubes (sometimes known to the uninitiated as "the band Bjork used to be in").

And yes, before you ask, Bjork is headlining this year.

The festival gets pushed farther back every year, and to many Airwaves has become the unofficial tourist season finale, which has seen a surge in recent years due to affordable flights, summer festivals like Secret Solstice and ATP, and the 2008 economic crisis dropping the ISK to reasonable levels for backpackers.



But despite its corporate origins, Airwaves has grown into the premiere Icelandic music festival while magically maintaining its grass roots feel.

"Airwaves is a showcase," explains Mammut guitarist, Arnar Pétursson. "It's a place for new Icelandic bands to get discovered and for established bands to play new songs--songs no one has ever heard."

Katrina added, "Some of the best shows we've ever done have been at the off-venues at Airwaves."

The "off venues" she's referring to are part of the sprawling carnival feel of Airwaves decentralized layout. This year, thirteen venues across Reykjavik will play host to over 240 musical acts. Atlason claims this unique set up is what makes the festival such a success. It's the "evolution of the modern venue."

"No one wants to be outside," Kaktus explains, "and that's part of the magic. You're trapped inside a crowded venue, so you listen."

Maybe that simple element--the fact that no one wants to go outside during the crappy weather--is what makes Icelandic music so haunting and exuberant. Or maybe, I'm nuts.

Discover firsthand what Icelandic music (and winter) are all about at the 16th annual Iceland Airwaves festival in Reykjavik, this November 4-8.

One final piece of advice from DJ Flugvél og Geimskip:

"If you wait outside in lines, you'll get sick."

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Since I started My Year of TED in 2011, I've found myself explaining TED quite a lot. Last week I had to do this again, and I was reminded of a blog post I did in 2012. I thought I'd share it with you here - noting that there have been hundreds of new talks since this time, but I think these still hold as a great introduction to TED.

It's not easy to convey just how fantastic TED Talks are and how life changing they have been in my life. So I thought that I should do a post for people who may not be familiar with TED, a post that points you in the direction of what I think are the best talks for you to start with. I would almost guarantee that after watching this small selection you will be hooked.

There are about 75 talks referenced on My Year of TED site, many of which I used in my project. To make it easier to know where to start, below is a list of nine talks that I think would give someone new to TED a great introduction to the type of talks and inspiration you can take from the site.

1. Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius - if you are a creative person at all then this is a wonderful talk for you. It's a plea to re-frame the way that we conceive creativity, that it is only something that is on loan to us. So that if it fails us it is only that our muse has forsaken us, and not a flaw within ourselves. This has always been one of my favourite talks, and it is a great indication of a number of the talks on TED about how we think about ourselves and how that can sometimes be very problematic.


2. Barry Schwartz: our loss of wisdom - this is the sort of talk that makes you stop and think about how we need to change the way we do things, how we think of each other in such limited ways and we don't really foster humanity. Barry explains the concepts of moral will and moral skill, which were new concepts for me and completely struck a chord. This one of many talks that I believe all leaders should listen too, even though it is about more than leadership. He's recently done a follow up TED Talk about how we think of work that is worth watching too.


3. Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days - I thought that I should include one of the short talks. There are a number of talks under 6 minutes on the TED site that cover very simple but powerful ideas. This one formed the basis of My Year of TED, so of course I would have to think it was a great idea, and a great talk to include in this list.


4. Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability (or Brené Brown: Listening to shame) - There is not a single list that I could make about inspirational TED talks that did not include a talk by Brené. I would recommend watching The Power of Vulnerability first, since the second talk does assume that you have seen the first. This talk, and her book The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, changed a lot of things for me, as I'm sure it has for thousands of other people around the world.


5. Ze Frank: My web playroom - there are a lot of talks on TED that about technology, the internet, gaming and how all of these things have the ability to connect us. Ze's may not be the greatest example of this, but it is bound to make you smile and make you think. This is why I have included it, since it is a great talk to watch as an introduction to the technological aspects of TED talks.


6. Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff - like technology, design is a major topic in the TED world. How to design things better, how it works to make us happy and discussions about problems with design. This talk is a plea for a Chief Design Officer for all government organisations, since design can make or break the ability for people to interact with the services they provide. That improving the design of things in understated and inexpensive ways is often the better option.


7. Susan Cain: The power of introverts - this is another talk that I could not leave out of this list because of how much it resonated with me, and many people around me. It is one of the classification of talks that I call normalising talks. This means that it takes a personal attribute that you might have always been judged poorly on and says "you aren't alone and you are perfectly ok". Since I have often found that I have been negatively judged on my introversion this talk speaks volumes to me, and her book even more so, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.


8. Aimee Mullins: The opportunity of adversity - this is a great example of the subset of talks that are simply inspirational. Aimee has a number of talks on TED, but I think that this one is the best partly because of the storytelling but mainly because of the message. It was hard to pick just one inspirational talk to include in this list, there were so many that I could have selected, but I think this talk has something very special in it.


9. Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? - this last talk is the most watched talk on TED, and is part of a very important topic on TED, education. Personally this isn't the most innovative talk on how we need to change education on the site, but it is a very powerful talk challenging the underlying premise of how our education is organised and how we suffer because of the lack of value that is placed on creativity in that system. It is a wonderful talk, a great example of storytelling, and it is completely understandable why it has been so popular.

I found it extremely hard to limit this list, there are just so many amazing talks full of incredible ideas and inspirational stories. There is one other talk that I would include in the list except that it is not actually a TED Talk (it is a curated talk), and it is over an hour long. It is the talk that I was Stumbled onto, the talk that led to me discovering TED many years ago. It is Randy Pausch: Really achieving your childhood dreams, a truly inspirational talk that has a bit of everything. Watch this, it will change your life, even if it's only for a little while.

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Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 189 , a measure empowering the California Arts Council to designate areas as Cultural Districts in a competitive application process.

Craig Watson, Director of the California Arts Council said, "The signing of AB 189, is great news for communities of all sizes, all across our state ... (we will) play a central role in strengthening local communities through economic growth, increased tourism, and community cohesion. The resources we expect to bring together on a statewide level will strengthen existing districts and foster the development of new cultural hubs."



Governor Brown, Craig Watson, and of course, Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) who introduced AB 189, all undoubtedly see the connections between the arts and creativity and, in turn, between creativity and innovation and want California to continue to lead the nation in the development of theatrical films, television, cable and Internet programs, video games, high tech hardware and software goods and services which are the heart and soul of the new economy.

AB 189 charges the Council to formulate a plan to foster Art Districts throughout the state, thereby enhancing creativity, and in the process, reinventing the landscape of cities throughout the state. The Council, always looking at ways to enhance creativity in the schools and almost everywhere art is displayed, has now joined the movement to change communities too. They will, according to the legislation, "provide technical and promotional support to the districts, as well as collaborate with public agencies and private entities to maximize the benefits to the local and state economy."

To date, 15 states have taken on a formalized State role in the creation of art and cultural districts. Together, they are leading the effort to transform America for the rapidly evolving creative economy.

According to the National Assembly of State Art Agencies, such "districts are special areas designated or certified by state governments, that utilize cultural resources to encourage economic development and foster synergies between the arts and other businesses. State cultural districts have evolved into focal points that feature many types of businesses, foster a high quality of life for residents, attract tourism and engender civic pride."

Arts districts, usually found on the periphery of a city center, are intended to create a critical mass of art galleries, dance clubs, theaters, art cinemas, music venues, and public squares for performances. Often, such places also attract cafes, restaurants and retail shops.



More and more however, cities are thinking about such districts as a way to insure the city attracts, nurtures and retains the creative workforce it needs to succeed in the new economy, an economy vitally dependent on creativity and innovation. As important as reinventing our systems of education, communities where people young and old spend more than half their day living and working, aspiring art and culture districts are essential to establishing vibrant and productive communities. Indeed, these places are the incubators of creativity.

Art and Culture Districts, says Theresa Cameron, formerly Local Arts Agency Services Program Manager of Americans for the Arts (AFTA), "have the potential -- with their critical mass of art galleries, cinemas, music venues, public squares for performances, restaurants, cafes and retail shops -- of attracting, and nurturing the creative workforce our cities need to succeed in the new economy." Recently AFTA has created a website devoted to the "who, what and why" these districts are so important.



As the geographical landscape of a city morphs into a larger metropolitan region--partly because of population growth, mostly out of economic necessity -- what we call downtown becomes even more critical to the wealth and well-being of the people living in those communities. Few efforts to insure America's success and survival in the new economy could be more important.

Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky and Massachusetts are the most recent state agencies to establish such an initiative. Eight other states recognized such districts as tax free enterprises and have adopted similar efforts. The appointees to Art Councils, usually loyal friends of the elected Governor, don't often take on issues of local economic development. But this seems to be changing, as many appointees are visionary leaders, action oriented, and making their voices heard.

States use a variety of tax incentives to encourage business development within local cultural districts. Examples of state incentives include sales, income, or property tax credits or exemptions for goods produced or sold within the district; or preservation tax credits for historic property renovations and rehabilitation. Maybe a state will offer an amusement or admission tax waiver for events within the district. All the plans vary and the funding is uniquely packaged to insure sustainability.

The "State Cultural District" designation from the Art Council seems to be enough for cities to apply, but you have to wonder what cities could do and whether smaller cities might apply if a little financial help were forthcoming. You have to wonder too, what might be possible if more organizations, chambers of commerce, economic development agencies and high tech companies in a region joined forces to help in the reinvention effort.

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What is it about family dysfunction that gives rise to black comedy?

Robert O'Hara's biting play, Barbecue, now off-Broadway at the Public Theater, takes raw concepts of truth, fiction and entertainment and grills them over a well-lit flame. He confronts America's love affair with suffering, the obsessional nature of celebrity and the tricky issues of race and class and skewers them to a crisp.

The play opens in a park where a trailer-trash white family is holding court. The siblings - an alcoholic brother, two addicts and one take-charge sister -- are holding an impromptu intervention for Barbara (a terrific Samantha Soule), their crazed crackhead of a sister. Dubbed "Zippedy Boom," she's hell on wheels. As brother James T. (Paul Niebanck) notes: "When she taste liquor, she go Zippity. Boom! Period."

The profanity is so ratcheted up, it's hysterical, and the interactions are priceless. This is a family stripped of pretension and illusion: Everything is fair game. Of course, an intervention among losers -- "She can smell free liquor within 10 square blocks" -- is fodder for a humorist; but O'Hara takes a satiric turn.

Shortly after the white family clash, a black family appears. Same names, same insane situation. Is he suggesting addiction and dysfunction are universal issues? Or that color is secondary to the rancid aspects of class?

It gets better.

The twist to Barbecue is ripped from the pages of pop culture. A smack upside the head on the nature of "reality," Barbecue is a smart, sassy original.

Kent Gash's direction is exacting and well paced. And he gets equally sharp performances from the rest of the ensemble cast: Becky Ann Baker, Marc Damon Johnson, Arden Myrin, Tamberla Perry, Constance Shulman, Heather Alicia Simms, Benja Kay Thomas and Kim Wayans.

Barbecue sends up society's pathetic need to revel in the misfortune of others, while the few profit -- handsomely -- from it.

On the everything-old-is-new again front, the play adaptation of The Gruffalo, the latest incarnation of the acclaimed children's book at New Victory Theater, is a winner.

London's Tall Stories brings its staged version of a mouse (Ellie Bell) on a hunt for hazelnuts. But the dark spooky woods are full of dangers. So when she meets a fox, an owl and a maraca-shaking snake, they see her as something more than a fellow creature.

She's what's for dinner.

The only thing that can save the mouse is her imagination. Loaded with ingenuity, she invokes her scary strange-looking friend, the mystical Gruffalo, to keep her enemies at bay, proving that creativity can change our destiny.

With Tim Richey as the predators and Owen Guerin as the Gruffalo, the musical, with engaging, occasionally interactive songs, hits the right note among the audience. Based on an ancient Chinese folktale, The Gruffalo is a perfect story for ages 4-8. It's funny, but also trumpets smarts.

The performances are adorable, especially Bell's, a favorite with the kids, while Lisa Aitken's costumes are adorable.

The book, by author Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler, has sold more than 13 million copies in 58 editions worldwide. Their tale of a clever little mouse proves that less is more.

Photo: Joan Marcus

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The Ancient Greeks had a winning formula. During performances of their tragedies, acts of excessive violence and gore had to take place offstage and out of the audience's sight. Later, the actors would describe events too horrible to imagine.

How does one describe a gruesome cyclops or monsters devouring helpless sailors? One might start with the words "Oh horror, horror, horror!" After all, when push comes to shove it's all about telling a story, spinning a yarn, capturing an audience's attention and keeping them hooked on a narrative.

As new technologies have helped filmmakers concoct ever more ingenious special effects, audiences have progressed way beyond the kludgy kind of stop-motion animation used in 1925's The Lost World, 1953's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and 1955's It Came From Beneath The Sea.









No more can filmmakers rely on the man-in-a-rubber-suit device (1954's Godzilla and Creature from the Black Lagoon). Steady advances in CGI technology allow today's filmmakers to go for increasingly ridiculous scripts. Two classic examples of such wretched excess are 2009's Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus and 2014's version of Godzilla.







At some point, however, an audience is going to want more than just cheap visual gags. They're going to want suspense, terror and masterful storytelling. In 2006, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho delivered all three, giving audiences the thrills they had craved with The Host.









How does one tell a contemporary horror story if one's audience can't see the monster? What if the audience is gathered in a 50-seat theatre with no possibility of elaborate scenic effects? How does a playwright scare the shit out of them?

* * * * * * * * * *

A recent headline that grabbed the attention of Bay area readers stated that the Military Once Used SF Fog For Simulated Germ-Warfare Attack, Exposing 800,000 To Harmful Bacteria. In his book, Clouds of Secrecy, Leonard A. Cole (Director of the Terror Medicine and Security Program at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School) described the trials as using "harmless bacteria" while admitting that it was one of the largest human experiments ever conducted.

According to reports, during the 1950s the United States Armed Forces used San Francisco's coastal fog belt as "a means of masking the spread of a biological agent in simulated germ-warfare attacks. Nearly all of San Francisco received 500 particle minutes per liter. In other words, nearly every one of the 800,000 people in San Francisco exposed to the cloud at normal breathing rate (10 liters per minute) inhaled 5,000 or more particles per minute during the several hours that they remained airborne."

One's awareness of these tests adds an extra wallop of verisimilitude to a provocative new play, I Saw It, which was recently staged by Wily West Productions at the EXIT Studio. With Jennifer Lynne Roberts acting as head writer, most of the hard-hitting monologues/soliloquies in this 75-minute drama were written by Laylah Muran de Assereto. Tensely directed by Ariel Craft, I Saw It featured a Greek chorus of frantic Bay area Twitterati posting hysterical tweets that include pleas for help and such panicky messages as "#End of Days"




Samantha Behr is Isla in I Saw It (Photo by: Colin Hussey)

• Isla (Samantha Behr) is the woman who claims to have first seen and reported "it." In a moment of visceral panic mixed with a surprising amount of lucidity, Isla bravely thrust her hand inside "it." Her action transferred "its" strength to herself while draining the [supposed] monster of its fearsome potential.


• Van Clarkson (Richard Wenzel) is Isla's estranged father, a harried man who works as a local television reporter. With old-fashioned "on the spot reporting" having been reduced to reading selective messages off of a Twitter feed, there really is no way for Van to check his sources or verify the information he is receiving.

Colleen Egan is Nola in I Saw It (Photo by: Colin Hussey)

• Nola (Colleen Egan) is an extremely unhappy woman with a limp who hates her biological parents, loathes her stepfather and is very protective of her kid brother, Bobby (Kyle McReddie). In a perverse way, the bitter Nola thrives on the fear and terror felt by others who have encountered "it" while magically seeming to draw strength from "its" presence and "their" misery.


• Josephine (Susannah Wood) is a member of the local Twitterati who knows the location where @mal_ware usually checks in on a daily basis.

Kyle McReddie is David in I Saw It (Photo by:Colin Hussey)

• David (Kyle McReddie) is a gay man in his 30s who moved to San Francisco three years ago in the hope of making a killing in the tech industry. Although he rides a Google bus to work, knows his way to Dolores Park and buys groceries at Bi-Rite, he has no real friends, no furniture in his apartment and no connections to the community in which he lives. With new mobile apps constantly coming online that cater to his needs, David can use his smartphone to place orders for laundry services, pizza deliveries and sexual partners he contacts while cruising gay online hookup platforms on social media.


• Diana (Genevieve Perdue) is one of David's neighbors in his apartment building. As the executive assistant to a scientist working on a biochemical subterfuge experiment named Project 46, she has already used its amazing powers to transform her husband from an enthusiastic meat eater into a vegan like herself. Smiling, laughing and more than willing to accept that collateral damage is often the unanticipated cost of scientific experimentation, Perdue's Diana brings to mind the evil twin of Donna McKechnie's needy Cassie Ferguson from the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line.

Genevieve Perdue is Diana in I Saw It (Photo by: Colin Hussey)


I Saw It deftly demonstrates what can happen when the "monster attacking a city" bears no resemblance to a prehistoric dinosaur or a radioactive mutant creature, but results from the dissemination of a carefully engineered hallucinogen which can alter a person's preferences and behaviors in the way a hacker might attack a software program's source code. On a good day, the lab-engineered biochemical can trigger a person's innermost fears, lack of self-esteem or bravado. On a bad day..... oh, well, you know how some people act under stress!




Katrina Kroetch and Richard Wenzel are two of the
Bay Area's Twitterati in I Saw It (Photo by: Colin Hussey)


I was especially impressed by Genevieve Perdue's portrayal of the amoral Diana, Colleen Egan's resentful Nola and Samantha Behr's "take-no-prisoners" characterization of Isla. Other members of the Twitterati included Katrina Kroetch, Jason Jeremy, Kyle McReddie and Richard Wenzel.




To read more of George Heymont go to My Cultural Landscape

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The galleries of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum have recently opened an exhibition by artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), successfully curated by Paloma Alarcó, that enables us to "listen to the dead with our eyes." Paintings and writings come together in the museum's galleries, divided into emotional Archetypes to communicate this artist's obsessions from throughout his intense life.

People think that you can have a few friends, forgetting that the best, most authentic and above all, most numerous, are the dead. I intend to engage in a series of conversations with the afterlife. As the tormented spirit of the Norwegian artist has circumstantially settled in Madrid, I enthusiastically headed there to learn more.







Elena Cué: Let's start with your childhood.

Edvard Munch: I always felt like I was treated unfairly during my childhood. I inherited two of the worst enemies of mankind: tuberculosis and mental illness. Disease, insanity and death were black angels beside my crib. A mother who died early, planting me with the seed of tuberculosis. A hyper-nervous, pietistic father, religious to the point of being crazy, from an ancient lineage, planting me with the seeds of insanity.

When you think about those years, how did you feel?

The angels of fear, pain and death were beside me right from birth, going out to play with me, following me under the spring sun, in the splendor of summer. They were with me at night when I closed my eyes, threatening me with death, hell and eternal punishment. And I often woke at night and looked around the room with panicked eyes thinking "Am I in hell?"

The fear of death tormented me, and this fear harassed me through all of my youth.

Heaven and hell, how do you envisage eternity?

Flowers will emerge from my rotting body, and I will be part of them. That is eternity.






And where is God?

With fanatic faith in any religion, such as Christianity, came atheism, came fanatic faith in the existence of no God. And with this non-faith in God there was content, becoming a faith itself in the end. It is generally foolish to assert anything about what comes after death.

But what is it that gives strength to the Christian faith. There are many who have difficulty in believing it. Although one cannot believe that God is a man with a big beard, that Christ is the Son of God who became a man, or in the Holy Spirit formed by a dove, there is much truth in this idea. A God as the power that must be at the origin of all, a God that governs everything. We can say that he directs the light waves, the movement of the tides, the center of energy itself. The Son, the part of this energy that is in man, the immense energy that filled Christ. Divine energy, genius energy and the Holy Spirit. The most sublime thoughts sent by the sources of divine energy to the human radio stations. In the very depths of beings. That which is provided to every human being.






But what do you think death is?

Dying is as if the eyes have been switched off and cannot see anything else. Perhaps it's like being locked in a basement. You are abandoned by all, they closed the door and left. You see nothing and only notice the humid smell of putrefaction.

And what about life?

I have been given a unique role to play on this earth that has given me a life of illness and also my profession as an artist. It is a life that does not contain anything resembling happiness, or even the desire for happiness.

Not even love?

Human destinies are like planets. Like a star that appears in the dark and meets another star, glistening in a moment, to then return, fading into obscurity. So as well, a man and a woman meet, they slide towards each other, shining in love, blazing, and then disappear, each one for himself. Only a few end up in a great blaze in which both can fully join.

The ancient were right when they said that love was a flame, as the flame leaves behind only a pile of ashes. Love can turn to hate, compassion to cruelty.






Jealously is closely linked with love, how would you describe it?

Jealous people have a mysterious look, many reflections focus in those two sharp eyes, like in a crystal. The look is exploratory, interested, full of love and hate, an essence of what we all have in common.

Jealousy says to its rival: go away, defective; you're going to heat up in the fire that I have lit; you'll breathe my breath in your mouth; you'll soak up my blood and you will be my servant because my spirit will govern you through this woman who has become your heart.

Now let's talk about art... where does it come from?

Art generally comes from the need of one human being to communicate with another. I do not believe that art has not been inflicted by the need for a person to open his heart. All art, literature as well as music, has to be generated with the deepest feelings. The deepest feelings are art.

What is the purpose of your art?

I have tried to explain life and the meaning of life through my art. I have also tried to help others clarify life. Art is the heart of blood.

We must no longer paint people reading or women knitting. In the future we must paint people who breathe, feel, suffer or love. As Leonardo da Vinci dissected corpses and studied the internal organs of the human body, I try to dissect the soul.

Conclusion.

My art is based on one single thought: why am I not like the others?

How do you think the audience should approach art?

The audience must become aware that the painting is sacred, so that it unfolds before them like in church.






One of your iconic paintings is The Scream, could you explain the origin of such a radical emotional expression?

I was walking along the road with two friends, the sun was setting. Suddenly the sky turned a bloody red. I stood, leaned on the fence feeling deathly tired. Over the blue-black fjord and city hung blood and tongues of fire. My friends walked on and I remained behind, shivering with anxiety. And I felt the immense infinite Scream in Nature.

Your love of photography is known, what do you think of photography as another mode of artistic expression?

The camera cannot compete with the brush and palette as long as it cannot be used in heaven and hell.




Where is the beauty in your art?

The emphasis on harmony and beauty in art is a waiver to be honest. It would be false to only look on the bright side of life.

Your writing has a strong aphoristic style. We'll finish there...

Thought kills emotion and reinforces sensitivity. Wine kills sensitivity and reinforces emotion.

Spanish version: Conversaciones con artistas del pasado. Edvard Munch

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THE BANDSTAND *** out of ****
THE GIN GAME **
ROTHSCHILD & SONS ** 1/2
THE INN AT LAKE DEVINE **


THE BANDSTAND *** out of ****
PAPERMILL PLAYHOUSE

It's 1945 and the war veterans (and war bride) in The Bandstand have a dream: making it in New York City. Their chance is a big band showdown where one lucky act with the best new song paying tribute to our troops gets a shot at movie immortality. Surely the talented folks behind this new musical have the same dream: making it in New York City.

Unquestionably, they've got a lot going for them: two very appealing leads, a brisk and propulsive visual style powered by director and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and a family friendly story with some bite (namely, soldiers suffering from PTSD, something rarely discussed in connection with World War II). A little more visual pizazz (Cleveland doesn't look that different from NYC, for starters), some tightening in the books and lyrics, and especially a thoroughly reworked finale and they might well get there. As long as they're not in a rush like the crazy young people at the heart of this story.

Donny Novitski (Corey Cott) is back from the Pacific, sleepless from memories of war and ready -- no, desperate -- to get his musical career as a big band pianist back on track. His room at home with the folks is feeling pretty crowded when a voice speaks to him about a glimpse of the future. A voice on the radio, actually, telling about a nationwide contest: amateur bands from around the country will compete to represent their state with an original song honoring the troops. State winners get to appear on national radio and the champ gets their song in a big Hollywood movie where they even get to play themselves.

Donny doesn't lack for confidence but he also has a very clever idea: he'll build a hot new band out of fellow veterans, giving them the credibility to pay honor to those who served because they served. Smart guy. Donny recruits Jimmy who recruits Davy and before you know it they're off to the races. Donny's got gumption and a pretty pushy nature but by god he can write some catchy tunes. Still, as he confesses to Jimmy, Donny doesn't have the guts to look up the widow of his best pal in the Army, like he promised. He finally gets up the nerve and lo and behold Julia (Laura Osnes) is pretty and has great vocal chops and before you know it Donny's big band has a girl singer. This crazy dream just might work!



Essentially, The Bandstand is smooth entertainment as the description of its basic plot makes clear. It might have been as bland as the generic poster advertising the show. Instead, it consistently allows a darker thread to run through the story. Donny gets furious when a guy won't give him work and makes a crack about thanking him for his service. His fellow musicians have their own tics: one is compulsively rigid and neat, another is dim-witted after an accident in a jeep and takes endless pills, yet another drinks constantly to drown out memories of Dachau and so on. The show would undoubtedly improve if those gritty impulses were encouraged even more. So many of these references (like one character being closeted) flit by so quickly you almost don't notice. And our hero's struggles shouldn't be so opaque: we're told repeatedly Donny can't sleep but you'd swear it has more to do with his drive to succeed as a composer, rather than nightmares from battle.

On the plus side, Blankenbuehler follows up his acclaimed work on Hamilton with marvelous direction and choreography. It's a good thing he did both here since they're so seamless in moving the story along. In the breathless opener, Donny is in the midst of war, discharged, reunited with his parents, dancing at a club with his mom and adjusting to civilian life, all in one convincing, character-defining whirl. Blankenbuehler's choreography is rooted in the dancing of the period but also incorporates everything from rigid military posture to boxing moves that reflect the inner turmoil of the veterans that is always simmering just beneath the surface.

Perhaps his peak is with the act one finale where the band receive a blow to their plans and crouch in pain, as if the news were an incoming shell. Donny begins a fevered, determined pep talk/call to arms "Right This Way" while crouched on the floor almost in fear before standing taller and taller. When the song is very good, as it is here, the show fires on all cylinders. When the songs are merely workmanlike (such as "First Steps First"), the talent involved makes you barely notice.

Cott is a terrific lead, playing a guy who can be pushy and determined and pretty damn annoyingly full of himself. Luckily, he has an old Hollywood charm that allows you to like him whatever his character may say or do. He was wasted in Gigi, but one sensed he was better than the material.. Given the chance to create an original role, Cott delivers. (He has a great Pal Joey in him, I'll bet.) He struts with confidence, dances with aplomb and you never doubt why the other guys eventually knuckle under and follow his lead.

Osnes is his equal as a dancer, all around performer, a stronger singer to boot and they have genuine chemistry. Thank goodness since their inevitable romance is so understated, you don't really get the sense of them struggling to contain their attraction until the very sexy "Give Me A Reason" pops up practically moments before the finale. Along with a few more beats about Donny's struggles with memories of the war, a greater sense of their sexual pull and guiltily ignoring it would add a lot of heat to their duets. Right now, those play more like hijinks among pals a la Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. That's fine but a little more sizzle please.

Another lost thread: Donny's parents make a memorable impression at the beginning and then disappear. He might as well be an orphan. Julia's mother is luckier: played with skill and grace by Beth Leavel, Mrs. Adams also has one of the show's most pointed numbers. "Men Never Like To Talk" tackles the emotional shell shock of veterans with admirable directness and humor. (Other strong numbers include an ode to Cleveland called "I've Got A Theory" and "Love Will Come And Find Me Again" which is supposed to sound like a potential hit song from the big band era while telling the story of our characters and succeeds on both fronts.)

In an essential and smart move, Donny's fellow band members all play their instruments in the show. They create distinct characters and swing with authority. James Nathan Hopkins keeps Jimmy from being a nerdy cliche (or obvious closet case) and ditto Geoff Packard with his tightly wound Wayne. Brandon J. Ellis is clearly ready to play the brother of Zach Galifianakis, though again just a smidge more of the sense that he was out of control would be welcome. (One throw-away albeit dark line isn't enough.) Joe Carroll is good comedy relief as the drummer Johnny and Joey Pero is a sharp foil to Donny's imperious ways as Nick and of course he wails on the trumpet with assurance. And again, another beat with Donny acceding to Nick's ideas or treating him with respect would add to their storylines.

The lighting by Jeff Croiter and sexy, fun costumes by Paloma Young are top notch, aided naturally by the makeup, hair and wigs of J. Jared Janas & Dave Bova. David Korins' scenic design is effective and efficient, though again, despite a little neon the streets of New York didn't seem terribly different from the streets of Cleveland. The sound design by Nevin Steinberg was plagued by persistent technical issues throughout the evening, but especially early in the show. The music direction and vocal arrangements of David Kreppel were excellent, powered by the strong orchestra both in the pit and onstage.

The music is by Richard Oberacker, with book and lyrics by him and Robert Taylor. Again and again, one wanted more. Not huge new scenes or lengthy back stories for each band member, but a moment or lyric here, a scene there that would deepen the story they're already telling. It's close but for the moment the nuance and subtlety that might raise the stakes for all involved is lost in the rush to get to the finale. If you've got a chance to see the show, skip below, where I discuss the finale. It's worth your time and we probably haven't seen the last of this.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

The finale is an ambitious failure, admirable but wrong-headed in numerous ways. One easily understands it intellectually, but it doesn't fly dramatically. For various reasons, the band sets aside its sure-fire, contest-winning tune and plays a far more serious version of the tune "Welcome Home." This details in blunt terms the struggles each member of the band has faced. Frankly, it's way too nail-on-the-head lyrically and not that satisfying (though the melody saves it). Worse, the song is played in a discordant manner as if these G.I.s and their girl singer were having a nervous breakdown on stage while revealing their souls; it's almost as if they've invented free jazz 15 years before Ornette Coleman. Osnes tears into the tune but it's over-wrought. It would be far, far more believable to deliver an actual big band number that contained uncomfortable truths wrapped in the classic form of Tin Pan Alley. Instead, they've gone for a Dylan-goes-electric moment that's unjustified. Of course, they lose and the show peters to a close.

After that epic apotheosis, we flash forward to the band watching the movie they might have starred in. They good-naturedly dismiss it, then a teenage girl asks Donny for his autograph and mentions she'll be at his show tonight. He mumbles something dismissive like 'That's sweet." Huh? Why is he being so jaded around a fan? Turns out they're now massive stars and the theater they've been at is now surrounded by a mob of autograph seekers. So now our head is spinning: they lose the big contest, make fun of the movie they didn't get to make and -- so we're told -- are now hugely popular. To cap it off, the two leads come out for their bows wearing sunglasses like Hollywood bigwigs. That's about two or three twists too many to be delivered in dialogue in the last minutes of the musical, none of it very interesting. And especially not when tipped off by Donny already taking it for granted -- has he learned nothing in this journey?

Luckily, it's easily fixed in numerous ways. They could lose the contest but a record label executive who says "I heard you guys warming up and love your songs!" could sign them. Or we could just see them laughing off their defeat because they kept their dignity, have a fellow soldier or citizen thank them for their song and they dive back into performing, Donny a little humbled and all of them ready to work for their dream. Fans could stream in by one and two as they whip into a final, rousing number until the stage is crowded with dancers and we could dream with them, rather than being told they've already made it and grown into satisfied fat cats. Really, anything like that will work better, especially if it lets them end by playing their music rather than filling in what happened and then walking out to flashbulbs. The message of The Bandstand (and it sure wouldn't hurt to come up with a better name too) is supposed to be that the music matters more than fame. Rushing to assure us they got fame and fortune anyway kind of spoils that.

THE GIN GAME **
GOLDEN THEATRE

Until now, I'd never seen The Gin Game. I knew it won the Pulitzer but I also knew it wasn't a vintage year for theater (its biggest competition was probably that middlebrow thriller Deathtrap). Of course, you always yearn to be surprised but it's only human to have certain expectations. I thought the story of two feisty old folk playing gin rummy at a nursing home would be some creaky but dependable comedy with a few home truths or modest reveals of affection or backstory popping up between hands. You know, a predictable but surely well-constructed play. Maybe a better showcase for old folk than that sentimental drama On Golden Pond, which was enlivened mightily in the film by two titans.

But titans can do only so much. We're all there to see the great James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson onstage, naturally. Still, even they can't do much with material this shockingly threadbare. And if one is honest, at roughly two decades older than Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy were when they turned this two-hander into a dependable moneymaker, even the modest physical demands of this show are perhaps just a tad out of their reach.



I assume classic gospel music wasn't wafting out of the windows of the nursing home when Cronyn and Tandy first appeared onstage. And I couldn't find out if the run-down clutter was in the original production. But make no mistake: the home where Weller (Jones) and Fonsia (Tyson) are trapped is a dump. Junk is piled up on the porch, an obvious symbolic example of how these two old folk have been tossed on the trash heap, forgotten by their families and friends (those that are still alive, that is). They don't have much but they have each other. A wary friendship springs up as Weller cajoles Fonsia into playing a little gin. She wins the first hand. And the second. And the third. And again and again and again. It would make a saint curse and Weller is no saint.

Act one is about what I expected: some obvious comedy beats put over by the brilliance exhibited by these two even in the twilight of their years. Act two however is a mess. The physical business that ends act one and appears in act two simply isn't convincingly staged: I was too worried for Tyson's safety to enjoy it and it felt more dangerous than funny or whatever they were going for. The "revelations" from each character are abrupt, forced, and unconvincing. It was sweet to see Tyson bouncing with pleasure when she finally convinced Jones to dance with her. But too often they must emote their way through confessions and confrontations and a bizarrely abrupt ending. And I've never felt such animosity for a scrim before: Riccardo Hernandez's work is painted with green leaves and dappled sunlight, heavy-handedly suggesting the gentle, nostalgic glow that his actual set tries to work against.

I'm sure the relatively younger and chipper Cronyn and Tandy (68 at the time compared to Tyson's remarkable 90) added a certain sharpness to the back-and-forth of this play that is lacking here. Nonetheless, it's a very, very poor play that has come back on Broadway about every 20 years...apparently just long enough for everyone to forget again what it's really like.

ROTHSCHILD & SONS ** 1/2
THE YORK THEATRE COMPANY

Bock and Harnick are in for some very promising few months on Broadway. First in December is a major revival of their blockbuster masterpiece Fiddler On The Roof. In the spring comes their charming She Loves Me, a musical spin on one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time, The Shop Around The Corner. And up first is this streamlined, one act rethinking of their Tony-winning musical The Rothschilds. Now called Rothschild & Sons, it focuses the story more tightly on the collaboration of father and sons in building up their financial powerhouse and then using that power to fight for the rights of Jews in Europe.

Hal Linden won the Tony playing Mayer Rothschild in the original and Robert Cuccioli is certainly the main attraction of this new mounting, bringing passion and smarts and an appealing vulnerability to the part.



I can't compare this to earlier productions, but apparently jettisoned is a romance subplot for the son Nathan in London. Instead, we see the indignities heaped upon Jews in the ghettos of Europe. Mayer Rothschild is smart and unflagging, building up a business from rare coins peddled with colorful anecdotes all the way to financial dealings with Prince William. But what he needs are sons! Sons can be depended on. Sons can become a network across the world. And sons are exactly what his wife Gutele provides, five to be exact. Before you know it, the Rothschilds are wealthy enough to attract the attention of major countries: locked in a battle with Napoleon, they need the money of these Jews. And what do the Jews need? A little respect would be nice. They'll even give a discount in exchange for it.

Cuccioli is the heart of the show and a strong, vibrant presence. One can imagine him in Fiddler quite easily, though of course Mayer is a very different role. After him, the main attraction is the score by Bock and Harnick. It's filled with durable, hummable tunes and the small pit is actually a plus here, emphasizing an old world charm a larger group of musicians might have overwhelmed. Cuccioli is strong throughout but it's with "One Room" that Glory Crampton has her best moments as a long-suffering wife.

Jeffrey B. Moss directed and unfortunately a rather broad style of acting takes over. Mark Pinter hams it up mercilessly as Prince William (he is, happily, better as the hateful Prince Metternich). Crampton after an early good start becomes overly dramatic right up the finale. And the actors playing the five sons are all encouraged in a "kiddie" sort of over-acting as children which happily calms down once they get older. It's magnified by the intimate space of York Theatre, unfortunately. Ultimately, Christopher M. Williams (with the meaty role of Nathan) and the Robert Sean Leonard-like David Bryant Johnson come off best among the sons.

What remains is an excellent lead performance by Cuccioli, some good if spotty work by others and a showcasing of a score and book that certainly feels streamlined, focused and deserving of more sustained (and nuanced) attention down the road.


THE INN AT LAKE DEVINE **
TONGUE IN CHEEK THEATER

Naturally, you must love a book if you want to adapt it into a play. But you need to be ruthless too. A book is not a play and unless you're doing an eight hour complete reading of The Great Gatsby (hey, it worked!) something has to go. Or actually a lot of things.

Sadly, ruthlessness was not present when Jake Lipman adapted Elinor Lipman's novel The Inn At Lake Devine into a two and a half hour play that sags under the weight of so much material to tell so modest and familiar a tale.

A young Jewish girl (Jake Lipman) in the 1960s is shocked to find out that the cabin retreat where her best friend goes every summer refuses to book Jews. Feeling like a spy, Natalie Marx actually joins the Robin Fife (Maria Maloney) at the cabin one week. And like many a spy before her, Natalie feels she is soon uncovered by the waspy, icily disdainful Ingrid Berry (Jennifer Dorr White).

What follows are many, many years of simmering outrage. Natalie can't believe anyone would treat Jews differently. She becomes pen pals with the very nice husband of Ingrid. She and her friend Robin both get a crush on the handsome son. Years later Natalie becomes a chef and when the Inn at Lake Devine loses its chef, well, you can be forgiven for thinking ahead.

But the show chugs along, featuring a holiday song here, a visit to the doctor there, a romance, a tragedy and more, all in service of apparently capturing as many elements of a book Lipman clearly loved and wanted to do justice to in every way.



Editing is the new lazy shorthand of criticism. Such and such a movie should have been thirty minutes shorter. Garth Risk Hallberg's doorstop of a novel City On Fire should have been 400 pages shorter. That TV show Homeland should have been a miniseries, rather than stretching out its storyline for five years. And so on. Nonetheless, at two and a half hours, The Inn At Lake Devine is radically too long. It doesn't help that the one confrontation we want -- Natalie or someone confronting Ingrid once and for all -- barely happens and then is covered up with all-is-forgiven hugs at the end. Instead, we spend scene after scene watching one person after another confront the issue of anti-Semitism for the first time.

This hides some strength by the cast. Lipman anchors the show and keeps Natalie from becoming a tiresome scold, not easy given the repetition of the material. Jennifer Dorr White is convincingly cold. Andrew Spieker has some nicely truthful moments as Kris Berry, Andrew Dawson has real warmth as the father Karl Berry and Carson Lee has square-jawed appeal as Nelson Berry. But above all Maria Maloney is adorable as the young Robin Fife, capturing the wide-eyed delight in the world of kids without every playing down to the part.

Multiple performances of hymns and holiday songs add nothing to the atmosphere (and could have been hinted at in much shorter excerpts). And we really don't want to hear a family count down from 60 to 1 not once but twice. Yet when Maloney can bring a character to life and make us care about her, we can see a glimpse of the novel that inspired this passionate adaptation in the first place.


THEATER OF 2015

Honeymoon In Vegas **
The Woodsman ***
Constellations ** 1/2
Taylor Mac's A 24 Decade History Of Popular Music 1930s-1950s ** 1/2
Let The Right One In **
Da no rating
A Month In The Country ** 1/2
Parade in Concert at Lincoln Center ** 1/2
Hamilton at the Public ***
The World Of Extreme Happiness ** 1/2
Broadway By The Year 1915-1940 **
Verite * 1/2
Fabulous! *
The Mystery Of Love & Sex **
An Octoroon at Polonsky Shakespeare Center *** 1/2
Fish In The Dark *
The Audience ***
Josephine And I ***
Posterity * 1/2
The Hunchback Of Notre Dame **
Lonesome Traveler **
On The Twentieth Century ***
Radio City Music Hall's New York Spring Spectacular ** 1/2
The Heidi Chronicles *
The Tallest Tree In The Forest * 1/2
Broadway By The Year: 1941-1965 ***
Twelfth Night by Bedlam ***
What You Will by Bedlam *** 1/2
Wolf Hall Parts I and II ** 1/2
Skylight ***
Nellie McKay at 54 Below ***
Ludic Proxy ** 1/2
It Shoulda Been You **
Finding Neverland ** 1/2
Hamlet w Peter Sarsgaard at CSC no stars
The King And I ***
Marilyn Maye -- Her Way: A Tribute To Frank Sinatra at 54 Below ***
Gigi * 1/2
An American In Paris ** 1/2
Doctor Zhivago no stars
Fun Home **
Living On Love * 1/2
Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album Interpretation ***
Airline Highway * 1/2
The Two Gentlemen Of Verona (Fiasco Theatre) ***
The Visit (w Chita Rivera) ** 1/2
The Sound And The Fury (ERS) **
Broadway By The Year: 1966-1990 ***
The Spoils * 1/2
Ever After (at Papermill) **
Heisenberg *** 1/2
An Act Of God **
The National High School Musical Theatre Awards ***
Amazing Grace *
The Absolute Brightness Of Leonard Pelkey ** 1/2
Cymbeline (Shakespeare in the Park w Rabe and Linklater) ***
Hamilton *** 1/2
The Christians ***
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Pearl Theatre Company) ** 1/2
Spring Awakening (w Deaf Theatre West) *** 1/2
Daddy Long Legs **
Reread Another **
Fool For Love (w Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell) ** 1/2
Barbecue (at Public) **
Old Times (w Clive Owen) **
The Bandstand ***
The Gin Game **
Rothschild & Sons ** 1/2
The Inn At Lake Devine **

_____________
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the founder and CEO of the forthcoming website BookFilter, a book lover's best friend. Trying to decide what to read next? Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter? Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It's a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It's like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide -- but every week in every category. He's also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It's available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.

Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.

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Robert Cuccioli in Rothschild & Sons. Photo: Carol Rosegg
The York Theatre Company, the determined, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-make-a-musical group in the basement of a church within the Citicorp Center, has rolled up their sleeves and -- with great care and determination -- made a "new" musical out of Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick's The Rothschilds. This severely cut-down version, fashioned by the two surviving authors (Harnick and librettist Sherman Yellen), is called Rothschild & Sons. It brings what had been an overstuffed and overloaded opus back to the stage, and allows the material to shine brightly in places. It should prove highly popular with the York's loyal subscribers as the opening salvo of their 46th season. It does not, though, solve the show's myriad problems.

The Rothschilds -- based on the 1962 best seller about the banking dynasty by Frederic Morton, who goes uncredited in the program -- was created by a highly ambitious but overreaching producer lusting for a hit along the lines of Fiddler on the Roof; he seems to have worn down Bock & Harnick, the Fiddler songwriters, until they wearily and warily agreed to do it. The show was so desperately troubled that it permanently severed the partnership of Bock & Harnick, which over thirteen years had brought forth the ambitious Fiorello!, the classic Fiddler, and the lustrous She Loves Me. As for their final effort, Harnick wrote at the time that "considering that The Rothschilds is actually an impossible show to pull off, I think we did pretty well."

It is an impossible show to pull off; they couldn't do it then, and they can't do it now. The story tells of a poor-but-ambitious peddler in the Frankfurt ghetto, circa 1772, who becomes the father of five sons (although the musical writes out the five daughters); becomes banker to the chieftains or Europe; and ultimately helps tear down the ghetto walls, or at least some of them. This, in 1818; it goes without saying that this was not a lasting freedom.

That being the case, the Rothschilds musical had to tell us about the man and the sons and the money; the show, in 1970, got bogged down in the final stretch with twenty minutes of characters singing songs and haggling about bonds, which was as fascinating as it sounds. A good deal of the second act was taken up with scenes and songs dealing with the progress in England of number three son Nathan, while the other brothers sat in their dressing room, and his courtship of a "Jewish Joan of Arc." The corresponding songs, while displaying the intelligence and craftsmanship that marked all the work of Bock & Harnick, couldn't carry the story.

Glory Crampton, Robert Cuccioli and Christopher M. Williams in Rothschild & Sons. Photo: Carol Rosegg
We now have what is said to be a "reimagined" version of the show; from the evidence on display, it seems that they have simply rummaged through the early drafts and reinstated material. (There are several songs here which, if you sat listening to them in Detroit, you would have said -- well, that one is gonna be cut.) They have wisely deleted most of the material about bonds, and poor Hannah Rothschild is helpfully excised altogether. They have also, alas, added reprises that slow things down. The show, which surely topped two-and-a-half hours in 1970, is now performed in an intermissionless 1:50.

The 1970 Rothschild family, with the sons played by both child and adult actors, was comprised of twelve members of Actor's Equity; the present heavily-doubled version has an entire cast of only eleven. Thus, the most memorable moment in 1970 -- when the young sons went into hiding before a pogrom, emerging thirty seconds later as grown men -- is necessarily missing. So is what was probably Yellen's funniest line, about a pawn shop.

Robert Cuccioli, as Mayer, is the standout in the cast. While he might not have the Yiddish twinkle in the eye of Hal Linden -- who originated the role and won a Tony in the process -- he plays the role with authority and charm. (Cuccioli played Nathan in the last New York appearance of the show, off-Broadway in 1990.) Glory Crampton is fine in the problematic role of the wife/mother Gutele, who mostly stands around observing Mayer and the boys; and Mark Pinter piques our interest as an assortment of villains. This production would probably work better with underlying friction between Mayer and Nathan; Christopher M. Williams does not bring much to the role.

Christopher M. Williams (center) in Rothschild & Sons. Photo: Carol Rosegg
Director Jeffrey B. Moss and set designer James Morgan have fit the show onto the small York stage in a professional but not inspired manner. They get the job done, anyway, under restricted conditions. The costumes by Carrie Robbins, budget or no, are relatively impressive.

Even so, the songs of Bock & Harnick are here and play remarkably well. "Sons," "Everything" and "Rothschild & Sons" retain their power, even within the small confines and despite an often-anemic band of only four. "Just a Map" -- which was originally cut during rehearsals - -has been reinstated for Crampton, and is the loveliest song in the show. All told, Rothschild & Sons will give fans of the songwriters an opportunity to enjoy the work, in context; and will give the York a heartwarming tenant for the month. It does not, though, fix -- or "reimagine" -- the show.
.
Rothschild & Sons opened October 18, 2015 and continues through November 8 at the Theater at Saint Peter's

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Artist, Matthew Schommer shares with Arthena what its like to work at Christies, make art and his love for Bjork

How did you get involved in art?

I guess you could say I was born into it.  My entire family are artists.  My father, who taught us all, is an amazing painter, drawer, even sculptor. My mother paints, my sister makes drawings and etchings and my other sister and brother are writers and musicians.  Even our grandmother painted.  It's been a major part of my life from day one.

 Interested in learning more about investing in art? Find information about the artists and collections open for investment on the Arthena platform by clicking here.

What brought you to make the portrait of Bjork?

I was doing a lot of celebrity portraits for a while. Mostly classic icons. I felt like I wanted to do something with a more contemporary subject and thought she would be perfect since she is an icon of our generation.  Plus, I'm a big fan of hers.

I love your watercolor collection "New Drawing."  I'm love to hear about the process and influence of the collection?

I'm a drawer at heart really, but in the past few years I've been working on combining the two mediums.  I usually start by staining my paper.  I'll use coffee, tea or wine.  I've even buried the paper in the dirt for a couple of days.  When I find my subject matter I sketch out my composition, add my color and then it's layer upon layer of graphite.  

A lot of my influence is from my parents.  The stories they tell, the pictures they'd show me, then it all branches out from there.  I can easily spend half of the day wading through piles of old photos at thrift stores and flipping through vintage Seventeen magazines. It fascinates me looking back at all of this history and feeling that it seems everything has changed while nothing has really changed at all.  My next body of work touches on that idea a bit more.

How did you get involved in Christies?

A friend actually suggested I look for work as an art handler.  I had just moved to New York from Chicago and was working at a frame shop in Midtown.  I started out as a freelancer at Christies, juggling both for a while.  About a year later they offered me a full time position.  It's really been a great experience.

How has being in Christies influenced your own work?

I think just by being around so much amazing art everyday.  Getting up close and personal with some of the greatest works by the greatest artist in history.  Seeing their techniques, materials and subject matter.  It's really been my art history education.

Interested in learning more about investing in art? Find information about the artists and collections open for investment on the Arthena platform by clicking here  http://www.arthena.com. You can read more articles by Arthena on our Huffington Post Page or on our blog.

About the Author:

Madelaine D'Angelo is the Founder and CEO of Arthena, the worlds first crowdfunding platform for Art Investment. Madelaine hold's her Masters from Harvard University and is a expert in Art + Tech.Follow Madelaine D'Angelo on Twitter: @arthenaart

 

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Arthur Miller -- one of America's greatest playwrights whose work reflected his affinity for the underdog and who translated his social conscience into political action -- was born 100 years ago (October 17, 1915) and died in 2005.

A Miller play is always being performed somewhere in the world, but there's a remarkable revival of five of his creations about to take place in New York, where he grew up. Next month, A View From the Bridge opens on Broadway, a staging of Incident at Vichy opens Off-Broadway, and a Yiddish version of his most famous work, Death of a Salesman (with English subtitles) is about to open, too.

In the spring, The Crucible, starring Ben Whishaw and Sophie Okonedo, will open in New York as well. Meanwhile, his play Broken Glass recently opened at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut.

Each of these plays stirred controversy when they debuted, but a work that Miller never even saw staged has recently triggered a heated debate. When his long-buried screenplay, The Hook, was adopted into a play and staged for the first time in England earlier this year, critics wondered whether Miller's one-time friend and collaborator, director Elia Kazan, along with screenwriter Budd Schulberg had stolen Miller's earlier work when making their 1954 Oscar-winning film, On the Waterfront.

As with any thinking person, Miller's politics evolved, but he always believed in civil liberties and the right of artists, and all people, to express themselves freely. Although he later rejected the Marxism of his youth, he never lost his commitment to progressive causes and democratic rights. His writing was shaped by the major events of his lifetime -- the Depression, World War II, McCarthyism and the Cold War, the upheavals of the 1960s, and the global tensions of the Reagan era.

In 1965, Miller turned down an invitation to witness President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Arts and Humanities Act as a protest against LBJ's escalation of the Vietnam War. In a telegram to Johnson, he said, "The signing of the Arts and Humanities bill surely begins new and fruitful relationship between American artists and their government. But the occasion is so darkened by the Viet Nam tragedy that I could not join it with clear conscience. When the guns boom, the arts die."

Miller never forgot his introduction to Marxism. He was a teenager, playing handball in front of Dozick's drugstore in Brooklyn. While straddling his bike, waiting for his turn to play, an older boy approached him and began telling him that there were two classes of people, workers and employers, and "that all over the world, including Brooklyn, a revolution that would transform every country was inexorably building up steam." The idea was astonishing to Miller, raised in a family of businessmen who viewed workers, however necessary, as a "nuisance."

This chance encounter revolutionized his own conception of the world and of his family. "The true condition of man, it seemed, was the complete opposite of the competitive system I had assumed was normal, with all its mutual hatreds and conniving," he wrote in his autobiography.

Miller was born into a prosperous Manhattan family. His immigrant father had established a successful company, Miltex Coat and Suit. The family had its own chauffer. In the 1920s, "all was hope and security" in Miller's world.

But the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression wrecked the family fortune. They Millers moved to Brooklyn, and his father never again achieved success in business. He attempted to open another coat factory, where Arthur helped out and witnessed the company salesmen being ill-treated by buyers. He wrote a short story about the salesmen, In Memoriam, which planted the seed for his best-known play, Death of a Salesman.

For two years Miller took odd jobs, including working in an auto parts warehouse, to help out the family and to save money for college. In 1934 he talked his way into the University of Michigan, after being twice rejected because of his less-than-sterling high school academic record. (He flunked algebra three times.)

At Michigan, a significant number of students were more interested in the union organizing and sit-down strikes in nearby Flint and Detroit than in football games and fraternities. Miller joined the staff of the student newspaper, the Michigan Daily. In 1937, the paper sent him to Flint to cover a United Auto Workers strike at a General Motors factory. Miller saw the company using violent thugs and paid spies to infiltrate the union. Informing and betrayal would become central themes of Miller's dramatic works. Those years, Miller recalled, were "the testing ground for all my prejudices, my beliefs and my ignorance. It helped to lay out the boundaries of my life."

Miller never joined the Communist Party, but he was part of the left-wing movement that sided with workers' struggles and saw hope for the working class in the Soviet Union. Some of Miller's friends joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, fighting alongside antifascists in the Spanish Civil War.

Before college, Miller had seen few plays, but his interest was piqued at Michigan. "I chose theater," he recalled, because "it was the cockpit of literary activity, and you could talk directly to an audience and radicalize the people."

Miller was not alone. During the Depression, many young playwrights, actors, and directors used theater as a vehicle to promote radical ideas and action. Their plays revealed the human suffering caused by economic hard times and celebrated the burgeoning protests by workers, farmers, and others. The Group Theater in New York City, founded in 1931, was one of the first efforts to present plays in a naturalistic style, sometimes called "social realism."

Its members, like their counterparts in similar theater groups around the country, were inspired by European-born composer Kurt Weill and playwright Bertolt Brecht. The Group Theater's performances of Clifford Odets's plays Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing in 1935 helped create a new kind of Depression-era social drama. Some theater groups performed plays about current events that they called "living newspapers," designed to document injustice and inspire political action.

Miller was influenced by this combination of political idealism and social realism. The Depression had shattered the nation's social and psychological stability, and Miller's plays dramatized the family and community tensions brought about by economic hard times, war and a repressive political climate. Miller focused on the moral responsibility of individuals and society.

Miller's early plays reflect the radical spirit of the Depression. In 1935, during his sophomore year, Miller wrote No Villain, which won the university's prestigious Hopwood Prize. A later rewrite, They Too Arise, earned a $1,250 prize from New York's Theater Guild. It told the story of a coat manufacturer facing a strike and bankruptcy. His two sons can help resolve the dilemma, but only if they compromise their principles. The father observes that they live in a dog-eat-dog world and that one has to choose sides. One of his sons responds that the solution is to "change the world."

Miller's second play, Honors at Dawn, is even closer to Odets's agitational style. The play opens in a giant automobile factory where autoworkers are calling for a sit-down strike. The managers try to recruit Max, the protagonist, to spy on the union, but he refuses and is fired. Later, the company owner offers the nearby university a generous donation, but only if the president fires a radical faculty member and helps identify engineering students who are union sympathizers or Communists. When the president capitulates, Max begins to understand the corrupt relationship between business and the university. He returns to the factory to help the workers organize. Honors at Dawn earned Miller his second Hopwood Prize.

After graduating, Miller returned to Brooklyn and began writing plays and fiction. For six months he earned $23 a week working for the New Deal's Federal Theater Project, which allowed writers and artists to patch together a living while producing theater during the Depression, a project Congress disbanded in 1939 because of the radical views of many participants. Miller also worked briefly for the Works Progress Administration, collecting oral histories in the South for the Library of Congress.

To earn money to support his wife and two children, Miller wrote radio plays for NBC's Cavalcade of America series and others, honing his skills with dialogue and storytelling. During the war he also worked the night shift at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

He was about to abandon playwriting but gave it one last shot with his 1947 play All My Sons. The play critiques an economic system that pits an individual's ethics against his desire to be successful in business. Based on a true event, it tells the story of a manufacturer's cover-up of defective plane parts that leads to the deaths of twenty-one army pilots. The play, directed by Elia Kazan, a veteran of the Group Theater, was Miller's first real commercial success, winning two Tony Awards and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.

Miller went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, among other major awards, for Death of a Salesman, the tragic story of Willy Loman and his hopeless struggle for respect. The modern tragedy, based on the life of his Uncle Manny, stunned audiences and quickly came to be considered a masterpiece of American theater. It has been translated into 29 languages and has been performed around the world. The Communist Party's Daily Worker panned Death of a Salesman for being defeatist and lacking sufficient militancy.

The McCarthy era inspired Miller's most frequently produced work, The Crucible, which premiered in 1953. The play portrays the collective psychosis and hysteria engendered by the Salem witch trials of 1692. Miller made no secret of the parallels to McCarthy's anticommunist witch-hunt. By then, Miller had not been politically active in radical causes for years. But he was a vocal critic of McCarthyism and of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). That alone was enough to make him suspect.

When Death of a Salesman was made into a movie by Columbia Pictures, the American Legion threatened to picket theaters because of Miller's left-wing affiliations. Columbia pressed Miller to sign a declaration that he was not a Communist. He refused. Columbia then made a short film entitled Life of a Salesman to be shown with the main feature.

The short consisted of business professors praising sales as a profession and denouncing the character of Willy Loman. Miller wrote, "Never in show-business history has a studio spent so much good money to prove that its feature film was pointless."

In 1954, when Miller tried to renew his passport to travel to Belgium to attend the first European performance of The Crucible, the State Department turned him down, telling the New York Times that it refused passports to people it believed supported communism. The next year, New York City officials caved to pressure from HUAC and refused Miller permission to film scenes of a move he was making about juvenile delinquency in the city.

Miller was subpoenaed to testify before HUAC in 1956. This was during his marriage to Marilyn Monroe, for whom he had left his wife. According to Miller's autobiography, Timebends, HUAC chair Representative Francis Walter contacted Miller's attorney the night before the hearing was to begin, offering to drop the whole thing if Walter could have his photo taken with Monroe.

Miller declined, and the hearing proceeded, lasting several days. The main evidence against him was a stack of petitions he had signed twenty years earlier as a college student. By that time, some former Communists and fellow travelers who had also been called before Congress, including Clifford Odets and director Elia Kazan, not only recanted past beliefs but also gave investigators the names of others who had been part of the same groups or participated in the same events.

Miller was not the only witness who refused to name names, but he was among the most well-known, so his principled stance generated significant media attention. He was cited for contempt of Congress, a crime punishable with imprisonment. He instead received a year's suspended sentence and a $500 fine -- and legal bills of $40,000. In 1958, a U.S. court of appeals overturned his conviction.

Miller continued to write short stories, films, and plays (including several about the Holocaust), but, except with The Price, he never again enjoyed the critical success he had with All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and View from the Bridge . Nevertheless, his midcentury plays secured his reputation as one of America's greatest playwrights. His work is regularly staged throughout the world.

Miller took seriously his responsibility to be an active citizen, expressing his views not only through his plays but also through his actions. During the Vietnam War, he returned to the University of Michigan to participate in the first antiwar teach-in. And as president of PEN International, an association representing literary figures, he helped transform the struggling organization into what he called "the conscience of the world writing community."

Through the 1970s and 1980s, he campaigned for writers persecuted in Lithuania, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Latin America, the Soviet Union, and even closer to home, by school boards in Illinois and Texas. Miller's works were banned in the Soviet Union as a result of his work to free dissident writers.

One play that Miller never got to see performed was The Hook, which he wrote in 1950 but which wasn't performed until this June, when the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northhampton, England turned the screenplay into a play and staged it for the first time.

The staging of The Hook ignited another controversy, a decade after Miller's death in 2005.

Set on the docks of the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in the 1950s, Miller's hero is Marty Ferrera, an Italian immigrant who works as a longshoreman and fights a corrupt union. Miller described him as that "strange, mysterious and dangerous thing" that is a "genuinely moral man... it's as though a hand had been laid upon him, making him the rebel, pressing him towards a collision with everything that is established and accepted."

In 1951, at the peak of the Cold War, Miller and his friend director Elia Kazan traveled to Los Angeles to pitch the screenplay to Harry Cohn, head of Columbia studios. Cohn said he was interested in making the film but only if Miller would change the villains from corrupt union bosses into Communists. Miller refused and The Hook stayed on the shelf for 65 years. But The Hook inspired two cultural classics -- Elia Kazan's and Budd Schulberg's On the Waterfront and Miller's own play, View from the Bridge.

Miller's friendship and collaboration with Kazan ended in 1952 when Kazan cooperated with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and named former and current members of the Communist Party.

Two years later, Kazan directed On the Waterfront, starting Marlon Brando as a longshoreman who, like The Hook's Marty Ferrera, fights the corrupt union bosses. In Kazan's version (written by Schulberg, who was also a "friendly" witness before HUAC), the hero turns on his brother who is part of the corrupt union. This has been widely interpreted as Kazan's defense of his own informing on his former Communist friends. On the Waterfront received 12 Academy Award nominations, winning eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Eva Marie Saint, and Best Director for Kazan.

Kazan and Shulberg claimed that their film was based on Crime on the Waterfront, a series of articles about union corruption, extortion, and racketeering in Hoboken, New Jersey by reporter Malcolm Johnson published in the New York Sun that won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in 1949. There's no doubt that Shulberg drew on Johnson's book for On the Waterfront. But Miller was no doubt also aware of Johnson's investigation when he was writing The Hook in 1950. Kazan and Shulberg clearly lifted much of their award-winning film from Miller's earlier screenplay.

Miller's next play, A View from the Bridge, which debuted in 1955, is clearly a revision of The Hook but also a rebuke to Kazan and other informers. It is a tragedy about Eddie Carbone, an Italian American dockworker who informs on an illegal alien and dies because of it.

When Miller finished A View from the Bridge, he sent a copy to Kazan. Kazan responded that he would be honored to direct it. Miller replied, "I didn't send it to you because I wanted you to direct it. I sent it to you because I wanted you to know what I think of stool pigeons."

Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. This profile of Miller is drawn from his book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books)

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If you've been watching Late Night with Stephen Colbert recently, you've been inundated by a good deal of experimental poetry. That's because Colbert, long considered a "metamodern" performer by the American literati, reads experimental metamodern poetry to his late-night audience most nights. That he doesn't call it that makes his popularization of avant-garde verse no less shocking a development.

The term "metamodernism" was coined by an American professor in 1975 to describe literature that seamlessly combines opposite qualities -- for instance, sincerity and irony, high art and low art, competence and incompetence, optimism and cynicism, or Life and Art -- and does so in a way that makes it impossible for readers to know how to take it.

While the term is frequently applied to David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest and the generation of "alt-lit" it inspired, in poetry metamodernism has both taken longer to manifest and been decidedly less mainstream when it has.

In the same way that forward-looking high school English teachers in the 1990s and 2000s often told their students that some rap music can credibly be considered poetry, in this decade teachers are realizing that certain social media texts -- carefully framed, reframed, or remixed -- carry all the hallmarks of experimental writing. For instance, the "bad kids' jokes" Stephen Colbert and Sarah Silverman recently read aloud on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (see video below) would be considered metamodern art by avant-gardists because it is unclear whether they are funny or not, and why; whether they were intended by Colbert to be funny or painfully bad; whether there is a genius in their incompetence that could not be captured by a "competent" comic; and whether appreciating the strange humor of children is a cynical act or one that honors the unique logic of a still-forming human brain.



A 2014 call by the Comedy Central program @midnight with Chris Hardwick for viewers to tweet hypothetical names for "sad toys" ended up in my own metamodern poetry collection Metamericana as a curated poem entitled "#sadtoys", and in fact this sort of exchange between pop culture and the avant-garde has become commonplace. Timeout London has now published its popular #wordonthestreet feature -- which collects the strangest things real people have been overheard saying in London, much like the historical avant-gardist Guillaume Apollinaire did in his famous 1914 poem "Lundi rue Christine"--as a book that can only be classified as contemporary metamodern poetry.

Juxtapositions of Life and Art, presented as Art, may be nothing new, but their ubiquity in not just popular culture but contemporary experimental writing is. Consider Selected Tweets, a book exclusively comprising hundreds of actual tweets by poets Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez. Are these tweets cynical reproductions of contemporary social media practice, satirically compiled in a single volume? Or are they sincere reflections of two young Americans' lived experience, expressed via what is presently the most popular forum for such experience? Is a tweet "a slice of Life," or is it simply the building-block for our own (or someone else's) experimental art?

More recently, the poet Robin Coste Lewis explored a now-popular trend, "literary remixing", in her book Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems. The poetry collection, now nominated for the 2015 National Book Award, features a self-expressive epic poem comprised entirely of "titles, catalog entries, and exhibit descriptions" written by people other than Lewis. If snippets of "found text" are increasingly being reframed by comedians like Stephen Colbert (and, before him, Jay Leno, with his newspaper-clipping "Headlines" bit) as thought- and laugh-provoking comedy, literary artists are now using such blocks of Internet data to express not just themselves but their sense of themselves as multiply-souled.

The question now is not whether "literary remixes" and other self-expressive but concept-driven reframings of existing texts are commonplace, but whether the nation will have the same conversation about these cultural setpieces that it had about innovative rap lyrics in the 1990s and 2000s. Moreover, given that we can find the same sort of metamodern artistic gestures in play in non-literary settings -- for instance, in Jimmy Fallon's popular lip-synching contests, which straddle the line between an exhibition of real talent and intentional ridiculousness -- perhaps it's time to credit the metamodern ethos with bringing avant-garde artistic sensibilities to the largest audience they've ever enjoyed?

For more examples of metamodernism in contemporary culture, see the "Month in Metamodernism" and "Basic Principles of Metamodernism" articles at this link.

Seth Abramson is an Assistant Professor of English at University of New Hampshire and the Series Co-Editor of Best American Experimental Writing, whose next edition will be published by Wesleyan University Press in late 2015. His most recent book of metamodern verse is Metamericana (BlazeVOX, 2015).

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Creating an award-winning short film is a unique craft unlike its full length feature counterparts. The short-filmmaker has a small amount of time to establish narrative, character development, audience connection and musical score, all of which have much more leeway in full length features. Though these aspects can be seen as challenges, there are also artistic advantages to creating short films. Because of the brevity of a short film, there is no need or expectation for narrative. It can simply be a visual and aural feast, more of a statement than a story and with this advantage comes an endless well of artistic freedom.

Brooklyn-based artists Garrett Coleman and Jason Oremus decided to take the plunge into the well of short films with their award-winning project Indigo Grey: The Passage, which they wrote and produced together. Directed and edited by fellow Brooklyn resident and filmmaker, Sean Robinson, Indigo Grey: The Passage is a synthesis of varying art forms showcasing a sweeping score composed by Amy Lee of Evanescence and Grammy-nominees Dave Eggar and Chuck Palmer. "This film is about taking risks and exploring the lines between fantasy and reality and by daring to embrace the unknown," describes Robinson, "we are empowered to experience a catharsis beyond the realm of convention."


Left to right: Sean Robinson (director), Aidan Lok (star)

The film Indigo Grey: The Passage combines sci-fi aesthetics with martial arts and an emerging style of neo-Irish dance which is the predominant focus of the film. Starring the young Aidan Lok, this seven-minute audio-visual experience has no dialogue being driven solely by movement, imagery and the evocative soundtrack. With a sleek editing style and an expressive performance from Lok, the set up of the film lures the viewer into a mysterious realm as the sci-fi element is quickly introduced. In sci-fi, anything can happen which can sometimes evoke uneasiness within the viewer. As Lok's character slowly enters an ominous warehouse by way of a railroad track, he discovers an alternate dimension in which the gas-mask clad Hammerstep crew exists.

Coleman and Oremus are founders of Hammerstep, a group of former Riverdance stars who are reshaping and evolving this style of dance by integrating elements from hip hop, tap, and other forms of movement. Coleman is a two-time World Champion Irish dancer and Oremus was a longstanding principal dancer for the globally-acclaimed Riverdance phenomenon. Both Coleman and Oremus wanted to utilize their skills in Irish step but were yearning for something fresh, something innovative, and most importantly, something no one had ever seen before. This thirst for newness bore the unique style of Hammerstep which was first conceptualized in 2009 and since then has been performed at the famed Lincoln Center in New York and has even garnered attention as far as Australia and South Africa.

Indigo Grey: The Passage was officially released online on September 13th and recently premiered at the 2015 Los Angeles International Short Film Festival as well as being officially selected to screen at 17 diverse film festivals. Though their tour de film festival has only just begun, the short film has already won four awards, giving them a strong start to their journey. Indigo Grey: The Passage is based on the live, immersive show experience of the same name which is slated to open in New York in 2016. Its success in the film festival circuit is helping further the Hammerstep movement as more people are discovering and rediscovering Irish dance as well as how it has evolved.

Whisking you away with its sweeping cinematography, the film was well edited, elegantly directed, and hypnotically choreographed to a riveting soundtrack. Indigo Grey: The Passage is a truly one-of-a-kind project that merges the worlds of film, dance, sci-fi, art and music. With its lack of dialogue, the young Lok's budding acting performance is extremely impactful as he relies solely on his emotional expression and movement to carry the narrative. A lavish feast of sensory stimulation, this short film has successfully captured the attention of its viewers by transporting them to another dimension and most impressively, all within its humble seven minutes.

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To be transparent and honest, until last Saturday's Opening Night of Georges Bizet's classic The Pearl Fishers at Seattle Opera, I had never been to the opera. The frozen tundra of Duluth, Minnesota (where I was raised) may have had opera, but my people were too busy worrying about survival during Minnesota winters and summer mosquitoes for such cultural diversions.

Accordingly, the production of The Pearl Fishers I attended seemed like magical poetry set to music and performed by an amazingly competent company of musicians, singers and actors. It was a simple love story triangle with overtones of the wrathful gods making sure that the humans remain obeisant to them (or, in reality, to the priests), but it was also a genuinely stunning presentation of that uncomplicated story. Here's the Seattle Opera's synopsis of the performance:

Escape to an island paradise for a steamy tale of romance and rivalry from the great Georges Bizet (Carmen). The easy-to-follow story depicts a love triangle between an alluring priestess with a mysterious past and a pair of brotherly fishermen. When honor, jealousy, and communal duty threaten the peace, a long-buried secret saves the day and love conquers all -- but at what price?

I was particularly struck by the sheer beauty of the singing, which was strangely enchanting given that it was not in English. And the staging and costumes were also magnificent, creating an overall sense of being swept away from Seattle's autumn rain and dreary skies to a land where the sun is always shining, unless the gods are unhappy.

All in all, The Pearl Fishers is a magnificent production designed to entertain and inspire opera aficionados and novices alike. It runs through October 31.

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In the "Selected Collections" of his resume, Irvine, California artist Jeffrey Frisch lists a variety of private buyers of his work and one "Anonymous Thief," referring to the person who stole one of his sculptures from an exhibition. That's putting a good face on the fact that the $500 artwork was uninsured, so all that remains for him is a laugh.

Purchasing insurance for one's own artwork tends to be an investment few artists make. It is not at all unusual that an artist will take out a business owners' or a general liability policy for their studios and fair booths, which cover injuries to visitors, damage to equipment and materials, and losses when pieces are harmed while in transit or on display at a gallery or fair. Those policies offer a minimum of $1 million in coverage and start at $300-400 per year, with a $250 deductible. (Premiums are also based on the state -- California and New York are the most expensive, because of large awards resulting from lawsuits, along with hurricane-prone Florida -- and the existence of fire and burglar alarms, as well as the age and type of building (wood-frame or concrete block), the proximity to a fire or police station and the type of door locks in use.)

Insurance coverage of the completed artwork, however, usually requires a separate fine arts rider, just as some art collectors include on their homeowner's policies, which are considerably more expensive. For artists, a fine arts policy would include artwork in their home, studio and in temporary locations (such as exhibitions or loans or on approval to a customer or at a frame shop), as well as while being shipped from one place to another. "Claims usually happen in transit," said Armanda Bassi, an insurance writer for the Washington, D.C.-based Flather & Perkins, which writes policies for artists and craftspeople. In many cases, the artists seek payment for a total loss rather than the cost of restoration, because "they don't want to show or sell work that is damaged." Flather & Perkins charges $1,250 per year for a fine arts policy that provides $50,000 in coverage, while Thompson & Pratt in Lancaster, California offers a $1,500 plan that includes $100,000 in coverage. BRI/Partners USA, an insurance carrier recommended to members of the American Craft Council, offers a property and liability package for artists and artisans, with premiums based on the insured's own stated values of artwork.

All-risk fine arts riders that are part of a homeowner's policy by law include terrorism coverage, but those who live in likely areas of potential acts of terrorism, such as Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C., may pay more for their policies than those residing elsewhere. For artists who have incorporated and whose artwork is owned by the corporation, they may find that insurance carriers no longer automatically provide coverage for damage resulting from a terrorist act to their commercial customers, a repercussion from the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. However, because of the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, insurers are required to provide separate terrorism coverage for commercial customers, costing an additional two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half percent of the annual premium. The vast majority of art galleries in high target areas have added these policies.

However, even modestly priced policies may strike many artists as unnecessary, since the problem of theft or horrific damage seems remote, and most will be proven right. There is, of course, the exception. "I hadn't any insurance on my art, because I couldn't afford it," said Joel Fisher, a sculptor in North Troy, Vermont who had 43 bronze statues stolen from his yard and house last November. "It's a lifetime of work for me," adding that he estimates the total value of the artwork at more than $1 million.

Art or cultural property theft, thought to be the third largest dollar-wise area of criminal trafficking in the world after drugs and illegal arms sales, typically affects private collectors, as well as museums and houses of worship. Police investigators of art thefts describe the robbers' intentions as one of three possibilities, the desire for a quick sale, insurance ransom or as card in negotiating downward the charges for a different crime. Stealing from the artists themselves occurs perhaps more often but at a lower price point at shows, in which a number of visitors may be crowded into a small booth at one time. Bruce Gray, a sculptor in Los Angeles who had a $3,000 tabletop piece stolen off a Hollywood set when he had rented the work for a movie production, speculated that the thief "just wanted it. The person wasn't looking to resell." That point of view, seeing thefts from artists as a form of shoplifting, accords with a number of sponsors of arts and crafts shows as well.

For Joel Fisher, however, the purpose of the theft of his sculptures was none of those. "It wasn't the art, it was the metal," he said, noting that the cost of bronze has tripled since many of the artworks were first made. State police found 11 of the 43 stolen sculptures in a truck en route to an out-of-state smelter.

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While watching Stanley Nelson's documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, I was propelled back to my own remembered experience in these years - hearing Stokely Charmichael speak at my college campus, learning of Fred Hampton's murder by FBI and Chicago police while I was in the army. By now, the film has taken the festival circuit by storm and has had a strong theatrical release. It's a masterful work, carefully constructed to explore an extremely complex history in a mere two hours. Inevitably some things are left out and others are simplified. But for an understanding of the importance of the Black Panther Party in the long struggle for African American freedom, this film is a powerful document.

I spoke with Stanley Nelson on Friday during his national release tour, and we focused first not on the compelling and important content of the film but rather on the art of documentary filmmaking. After all, an artist like this takes hundreds of hours of raw footage and thousands of still photos and structures them in the form of a story. Or in this case it is a series of stories, small vignettes that each stand alone and each contribute to a growing understanding of the struggle.

I asked him how he constructed the overall documentary out of the series of shorter stories. "I tend to think of things in sequences and that's how film works," he replied, "in scenes and sequences. And that is the same for documentary film as for narrative film, it's a sequence. Part of it is rhythm, part of it is the order you put the stories in.

"One of the ways that it works is that there were certain scenes that you could move around, so there are certain sequences that fall into a time line and they have to be where they have to be. You know, the Panthers start, Sacramento action, then Huey gets shot. And then it's 'Free Huey.' Then the Breakfast for Children program. But then that morphs into the kind of style of the Panthers, which is something that you could move around. Where do you talk about the style? Where do you talk about the press, the media? Where do you talk about the rank and file and the fact that they lived together in these communes, which most people didn't know?

"So that could go in different places within the time line. So we had some pieces that had to be where they had to be because we decide that much of the story had to be told in a linear fashion. There's probably a way to do this film that would be non-linear, that would be beautiful, that would be the greatest film ever made. But I'm not smart enough to figure that one out. . . . But then you have these set pieces, these sequences, which can drop in kind of anywhere.

"Then as we got into the film we realized that those pieces had to come within the first half or two thirds of the film. Because once you get past that, then you just want to be into story. I mean, you don't want to hear about the Panther style after Fred Hampton gets killed. You're into the story. So now we know that the set pieces have to be in the first half. And where do they go in the first half? And that involves kind of rhythm and flow. In some ways that was one of the hardest parts of structuring the film is how do you structure that first half."

As we discussed the art of documentary making, we also agreed that there are certain characters, in certain interviews, who carry the whole film. One is the amazing Jamal Joseph, who was a mere 16 year old when he was arrested as part of the Panther 21 group in New York - he went on to be an ongoing organizer and is now a media studies professor. "Jamal is that guy," Nelson remarked, "one of those people who came out on the other end of his Panther experience in a really beautiful and whole way and it's really great to see."

Also crucial voice that Nelson captured was Erica Huggins - a young activist from Philadelphia who moved with her husband John Huggins to Oakland to work with the Panthers. John was killed at UCLA while doing organizing work. Erica continued on as one of the clearest voices of the party and an ongoing organizer today. Whenever she comes on the screen, you came to expect clarity and insight.

But perhaps the most powerful interview is with Wayne Pharr, who was a 19-year-old Panther when he barely escaped being killed by the police. It is the most wrenching sequence in the film, the pivotal moment that tells the whole story - the police raid on the Los Angeles Black Panther office in 1969, just four days after Chicago police had killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. The LA Panthers were determined to repel an attack and, if they were to die, at least they would have been able to put up resistance. An astounding thing happened. While over 300 police were present to "serve a warrant," they were repelled by gunfire from within and a five-hour standoff gun battle ensued. Because it was not over quickly, there was time for the press and the community to arrive. With such a large crowd present, the police could not complete the assassination mission and only took the survivors into custody.

Nelson got some beautiful present-day interviews with people who had survived this battle, including Gil Parker, Muhammad Mubarak, Roland Freeman, and Wayne Pharr. The description of what it took to hold out under fire, how it felt to be taking the full brunt of state attacks, is stunning. Especially beautiful is Wayne Pharr, whose own memoir was just recently published.

After the survivors describe what it's like to be under fire and trading shots for hours, after they describe the wounds they suffered, the blood on their face and bodies, and the pretty certain feeling that they were going to die, Pharr explains, "I felt free. I felt absolutely free. I was a free Negro. I was making my own rules. You couldn't get in and I couldn't get out. But in my space, I was the king. In that little space that I had, I was the king. And that's what I felt. You understand? That's what I felt."

What a transcendent moment. To recognize the achievement of freedom at the very moment of one's death - a death that comes in a moment of complete resistance - is both frightening and beautiful. It's the freedom that Denmark Vesey experienced, the freedom that Nat Turner spoke about.

I asked Stanley Nelson about that sequence and he picked up on it immediately. He said, "That was the one moment that helped pull us through that film. We literally would watch that clip, you know. I would go in there and say, 'OK, let's watch Wayne Pharr.' When I would get depressed and feel like we were never going to complete the project, I'd go let's go watch Wayne Pharr. And we would take a breath and say 'It's going to be alright because we've got that.'"

He added, "The other thing is that it's just such an incredible thing is both those guys, Roland Freeman and Wayne Pharr, have passed away since we did those interviews. There's a lot of psychological pressure and stress that affected their lives." We can only be grateful that Nelson got that interview and was able to tell their story before they died.

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution reminds us of what a revolutionary period we were in and we are in. Tired of being brutalized and ostracized and colonized, urban Black communities were in a state of rebellion. When J. Edgar Hoover declared that the Black Liberation Movement was the greatest threat to the internal security of the US (and by that he meant those racists in power) he was not just a silly delusional old man. He understood the revolutionary challenge at hand and he was absolutely right that they threatened the power structure. And when the BPP demand for basic democratic rights in the form of community control of the police was met with massive armed assaults, it only proved how entrenched the repressive relationship between the state and Black communities has always been.

Stanley Nelson felt compelled to make the film in order to contribute to the ongoing process of discussion and action for Black liberation. He argues that the Black Lives Matter movement is not just a new period but is actually part of an ongoing legacy, a long period of struggle, that goes back many decades and still continues. And he says that future generations people may well regard this as all one extended movement. The lessons of the Black Panther Party legacy, lessons that are political and cultural and personal, are worth gathering, debating, and moving forward today.

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Admiral Richard E. Byrd in Antarctica during his second expedition 1933-1935. Courtesy of BPCRC.

In 1985, the Polar Research Institute at the Ohio State University made a successful bid to acquire the archives of noted polar explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd (for more about Admiral Byrd, please see accompanying article, "Mysteries in Ice," here). OSU and the Institute, now renamed the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the processing of the Byrd archive, which took place over a two-year period from November 1, 1992 through October 31, 1994.

Contained within the archives, which before their acquisition by Ohio State had been housed in varying locations, among them several warehouses and a barn -- environments not conducive to preservation -- were reels of acetate and nitrate film, including 28 reels containing Byrd's Discovery Lecture Film Series.

After copious analysis by a film intern from New York University, only 10 of the reels were deemed salvageable. With a generous grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, those reels were restored for the archive.

With the restoration of those remaining 10 reels, and the Byrd Center having hired filmmaker and artist Pamela Theodotou as their media specialist, in seeing what the Center had in the remaining reels from the Discovery Lecture Film Series, it became apparent to Theodotou that there was enough content to piece back together one of Admiral Byrd's most famous expeditions to Antarctica, which took place between 1933-1935.

"I only became aware of the archive films when Laura Kissel, the Byrd Center's Polar Archivist, won the grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, just after starting my work there," says Theodotou. "I knew the footage had to be extraordinary if any of it had in fact survived. I pitched several ideas depending on the content that could be salvaged. It could have been anything from a video installation piece, very concept-driven if there was no continuity to the images, or potentially a documentary feature film if we had enough of the film to continuously tell a story. We were very lucky that enough of the right reels could be saved to pursue a feature-length documentary film."

She continues:

Identifying what we were looking at was by far the most challenging aspect. Initially to the uninitiated eye it all can look like lots and lots of snow. Upon closer inspection you begin to identify the expedition members, the different planes, ships, and areas they are exploring.

It took many hours of archive research to be able to identify the more that 1000 clips and it necessitated becoming an expert in the expedition itself with all its nuances. Also knowing something about the film crews, the kinds of film they were using, told me quickly if we were in 1928 or 1933.

Byrd had numerous script concepts on paper as well and his traveling lecture transcripts that helped us group together the clips once they were identified so we had a close chronological representation of the events.

As Theodotou had been a photographer and filmmaker with films on the international film festival circuit, she was immediately fascinated by the dynamic nature of the content, as well as its history.

"From the beginning I think I had a great deal of reverence for this material. The footage from the first expedition was crafted into a film by Paramount pictures and won an Oscar for its cinematography. The sheer beauty of some of the shots these cinematographers managed in such conditions is breathtaking. As a photographer myself I am in awe that they could and did achieve such cinematic perfection at 70 below zero. Modern convenience was not available to these guys -- they were working with crank powered movie cameras and celluloid film that they could not even develop until they got back to the States several years later.

In making the film, every frame was precious so I made use of every piece. None of it is left on the cutting room floor, so to speak. It is of such a rare and special quality it should be easily available for the public to see it, thus the goal to craft it all into a feature film. Our luckiest break is that even though only 10 of the 28 reels survived, we had a lush amount of content that spanned the whole expedition and some of the footage from the first expedition survived to fill in the blanks. Some of the reels we had preserved were double copies so I thank providence that we seemed to get at least one survivor reflecting every aspect of the expedition.

Historically to have these moving images from 100 years ago will be important for generations to come, says Theodotou. "The fact we had the ability to make that footage into a film that tells the Byrd story is a huge bonus. It makes it consumable for the public. That in turn, I think, makes it a source of inspiration on many of levels, a purpose that Byrd himself knew was important.

The larger significance isn't lost on Kissel. "As the polar curator, my goal is always to make people aware of the amazing collections we have here. So the film [is important] for that same goal. "

According to David Filipi, the Director of Film and Video for the Wexner Center for the Arts, where Byrd 1933 will have its world premiere in its initial version before another is completed that will go on the international film festival circuit:

"A film project such as this speaks to the importance of film preservation and how working to restore and save such important historical documents is a critical mission. And it's always a thrill to see how powerful an effect vintage film can have audiences in the present day."

This kind of effect is something that Filipi knows well, having been with the Wexner Center's film/video department since 1994, and having been its director since 2010. His experience has included organizing retrospectives of and visits by such filmmakers as Richard Linklater, Milos Forman, Peter Bogdanovich, Pedro Costa, Philip Kaufman, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Ellen Kuras, D.A. Pennebaker, Arnaud Desplechin, Gus Van Sant, Guy Maddin, Natalia Almada, Frederick Wiseman, the Quay Brothers, among others, including both established and emerging filmmakers.

Erik Pepple, who handles Media and Public Relations for the Wexner Center further emphasized the importance of film for the Wexner Center, which was named after the father of famed entrepreneur Les Wexner, Chairman and Founder of the Limited Brands, who is still a major donor.

"Film is one of the Wexner Center's primary areas of programming. We screen more than 170 films a year (everything from experimental works to international cinema to classics), often with filmmakers in attendance. We recognize film as a major art form and vehicle for expression and understanding the culture."

In terms of the partnership with the Byrd Center, also at Ohio State, says Filipi:

We've enjoyed partnering on a number of events with the Byrd Center over the years but when I heard the general details of the footage and the archival nature of the project -- first from Laura Kissel at the Byrd Center -- I became very intrigued. It's essential to share these important historical pieces with audiences and this is an inherently fascinating project that should provoke lots of conversation.

With the continued debates about climate science in the media, one can imagine that is one of the topics of conversation. A film like Byrd 1933 makes it plain that scientific research on polar and climate science has been going on for some time. More than that, film and media in general have become an important part of science, not just in terms of education and outreach, but also in terms of making a visual record of the research itself. Byrd himself was an innovator in that regard.

"Film offers audiences an often immediate and direct connection with its topics [especially] in the case of documentaries when audiences can see and hear the subjects directly, they can hopefully generate an understanding and context for issues in a manner uniquely offered by this medium," says Pepple.

"In the case of Byrd 1933, the painstakingly restored footage and use of audio and text from Byrd's archives, gives viewers a direct experience in seeing and understanding his extraordinary journey in a manner no other art form can."

Theodotou herself clearly gained an immense respect for her subject, from both her copious research as well as the hours she spent poring over and working with the film clips themselves.




Ticker tape parade for Admiral Byrd in New York City. Courtesy of BPCRC.

I have read through mountains of archive material on [Byrd] and I cant say enough about both his integrity and his tenacity. He comes from an age of gentlemen. He carried his public persona with a great deal of respect and honor.

As a genuine adventurer he was an American heroic figure, a role which he took as a public trust to uphold as an obligation and not for fame's sake. The letters you read in the archive whether they are to presidents or to school children are always heart warming, serious and genuine. I found a particular letter from a little girl especially touching.

She wrote to the Admiral to ask if he would bring her back a penguin from the Antarctic, and like so many letters from children he took the time to write back to her personally to explain that they are delicate birds and not the best of pets but that he would be sure to bring some back for her to see at the zoo.

She continues, again with warranted admiration:

All of that wrapped up into a man who never did shy away from a big idea. He fought for and raised every dollar he needed to do these massive expeditions to the Antarctic where he not only revealed a hidden world but was even able to define it for us.

Before Byrd it was widely thought that Antarctica was two separate islands, but he was able to determine it in fact was our seventh continent. What people don't realize is how the pursuit of science was a main purpose behind his expeditions.

In many of his interviews he proudly acknowledged the scientists who traveled with him who served 22 different branches of science.

In the two years Theodotou has been working on staff at the Byrd Center, her department has generated over 100 videos for education as well as documentary films.

There is also further film content from Admiral Byrd's expeditions that is in need of preservation; the Byrd Center is currently storing it in a climate controlled environment, including nine reels of nitrate film stored in their freezers with one of the largest collections of historic ice core samples in the world. That content will remain protected until the Center receives the funding to develop and/or restore it.

"In this area it is definitely the power of documentary film that brings media and science together. It has risen to an art form that I think is equal in importance to narrative film. And I can only hope that with such subject matter to work with, it might also easily be as popular as well."

The world premiere of Byrd 1933 will be held at the Wexner Center for the Arts on October 20, 2015. For further information, please see: http://wexarts.org/film-video/byrd-1933-films-discovery-lecture-series. For further information about the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, please see: http://bpcrc.osu.edu/. For more about the film and director Pamela Theodotou, please see http://www.byrd1933.com.

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Being a boy in ballet can be rough. Like a lot boys with interests counter to expected gender roles, they can get targeted for being "girly" or "gay" (whether or not these things are true).

But let's also pay attention to how we're responding to this type of bullying.



One of my least favorite defenses of boys in ballet is the "no homo" defense (with a side of misogyny). Growing up, I heard a lot adults tell boys who do ballet to respond to "that's gay" comments by replying that they spend their days surrounded by hot girls in tights that they get to touch.

Now I can hardly blame a kid for saying what he has to say to get through middle school-though the adults encouraging it might be a different story-and I get that it sucks to have people make assumptions about your sexual orientation, but it always bothered me that:

1. People care more about disassociating ballet from "gay" than disassociating "gay" from "bad." (And what if that kid is gay?)


2. As one of the "girls in tights," these statements always made me feel uncomfortable and objectified.


3. I also like girls, but I certainly never came to ballet class to check people out. I would be pretty offended if someone suggested otherwise--so why should it be different for boys, who are also probably coming to class for the purpose of actually learning ballet?

Because let's be real, ballet is hard, and regardless of your gender or sexual orientation, you're not gonna stick around long or get very far if you're only there for the purpose of staring at butts.

What does it say about our cultural values that staring at butts (as long as it's hetero) is considered a more acceptable motivation for boys in ballet than practicing a challenging art form?

Look, I want to erase the stigma associated with boys in ballet at least as much as anyone else-but we can't do that simply by erasing gay boys in ballet and waving around flag of aggressive heterosexual masculinity. That only trivializes the commitment of male dancers, demeans female dancers, and devalues ballet itself.

If really we want to end a stigma based in homophobia and gender-policing, we're gonna have to actually fight homophobia and and gender-policing.

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I was sitting alone in my studio looking at paintings, kind of meditating, letting all thoughts move through without stopping to dwell on them. I suddenly realized that there was music in the background, which I haven't noticed when it started, and it was eerie and beautiful. I enjoyed it so much I didn't stir, just sat there quietly enjoying now both the paintings and the music.

In the midst of what I would describe as a deep concentration, I noticed a movement at the corner of my eye, and then it was gone. I was mesmerized and remained still to see if it will happen again. I was curious. I was like a photographer waiting to capture a rare animal. The music continued and that, for some reason, made me feel more convinced that whatever was there moving before will return.

And then I saw it. It moved lightly among my paintings in the next room, unaware of me. I was challenged by it's shininess, the smoothness, the lack of human features but in it's reflections I saw myself distorted like in a fun house at the carnival. I heard the sound of la la and ah la la la la la, the sounds I made as a child by tapping my hand to my mouth. Off and on - a digital essence, La La, then the sounds of ascending synths and mumbled love words, then the synth like bubbles and more love words. It was music from another world, as if the sounds of this world have been sent back to us in a new arrangement that is hard to recognize, yet rings true.

I only saw it for a few seconds and I wasn't sure I wasn't hallucinating. I kept looking for it to return, but instead, my own painting started moving, the portrait of my friend the late John Caldwell. I was just thinking of John the other day, missing him and thinking how, if he lived, he would by now have left the SFMOMA and become the head curator at the MOMA or the Guggenheim. He just winked at me.

Michael Hafftka

Michael Hafftka

Posted by Hitchhiker on Wednesday, September 23, 2015

I needed to talk to someone, to tell someone who will not laugh and say I was crazy. I knew my friend Oliver Luckett is always connected, even in the middle of the night, so I reached out to him with a message "Just saw an amazing creature and heard astounding music. It looked like a robot and moved like an alien". It took no time for Oliver to answer, "You have seen the hitchhiker". I thought this was a sign, I must paint the Hitchhiker.

Anyone who knows my paintings will know that painting a character in a silver hazmat suit presents a problem. I rely on human features in my paintings, even if I distort them, and here is a character that has none. Nothing better than a challenge to get me going, and I was set to work.

Very often, while painting, my mind is blank, and things form an emotional collage, from which I start to paint. The image of Hitchhiker floats over reality just like his music, the beat and the voice of a child saying, "I love you". I mixed print and watercolor to make these paintings of Hitchhiker. I hope he likes them.

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A version of this post originally appeared on Odyssey.

"I heard there were gun shots by Mt. View. Stay inside and be safe, sisters!"

1:28 a.m.

What would happen next would be blurry, confusing, painful, terrifying and result in a community shaken to its core.

"Everyone, I was there at the shooting. Stay inside and do not open your doors."

2:08 a.m.

"Girls, do not open your doors. Keep them locked. They think the shooter might be in the building."

2:09 a.m.

"Everyone please pray for my friends that were hurt."

2:12 a.m.

I'm sitting on the staircase in my apartment. I have four friends visiting me from California. They are sleeping upstairs. I have friends locked in their bathroom in Mountain View. They are scared. I have friends in a wing on the lower level. Cops are swarming. I have friends who heard the shots from their window. They are too scared to get up and lock it.

"Police are walking [through] the halls."

2:28 a.m.

"Press conference at Drury 6 a.m."

3:46 a.m.

I'm now with my friends, the police have caught the shooter, the victims are in the hospital, the building is no longer on lockdown and we are all trying to wrap our heads around an early Friday morning gone terribly wrong.

I'm laying with a blanket over me when my phone begins to buzz. It's my editor-in-chief calling. He wants updates, he wants to know if everyone is OK, and he needs me to be at the press conference as soon as possible.

The press conference has started. My camera is in my hand and I'm overlooking a small portion of our NAU community. They are crying. Delta Chi brothers are wailing at the news. I'm pointing my camera at their faces.

How did I become a person capable of broadcasting pain and suffering?

I'm uploading the files when I'm sent to take pictures of the taped-off hall.

I'm talking to an officer who's asking me if I'm OK. I'm not. He tells me about losing his son not too long ago. I think about how he probably knows how the parents are feeling right now, having heard their son has passed away. I have to leave.

The day goes on. My roommates are taking care of my friends, showing them around our beautiful Flagstaff home. I'm receiving calls, texts, updates.

Are you OK? I'm sorry. Can you be at the court hearing? Is everything all right? What happened? Have you heard the latest news? Thanks for the updates. I'm looking at your photos. Do you know who the shooter was? Do you know who passed away?

I take a nap. I wake up. I head to the court, where we aren't allowed inside with cameras.

Those shots could have been portfolio builders, but I'm so thankful I can't be in there.

That was somebody's son.

By now the news is out, the names are public, and the media all over the country is making our small town a headline.

I'm making our small town a headline.

"The members of Delta Chi would like to sincerely thank everyone for all the support given by the Flagstaff community and our fellow Greek members. What happened was a tragedy that can never be forgotten At 7:00 tonight we will be holding a candlelight vigil at the North Quad for those who knew Colin and wish to show their support, and to show support for our brothers still in the hospital."

I'm there 15 minutes before 7:00. There's already hundreds of people. The members of Delta Chi stand in the front, heads bowed, arms around one another, tears in their eyes and pain on their faces.

What happened next might be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

The lighter is passed, the candles are held high, our campus is glowing with love and support in a time of heartbreak. Beautiful words are spoken, people hold each other closely, our community is strong.

I'm thankful.

It isn't easy filming people who are enduring such physical and emotional hurt. I don't take this responsibility lightly. But this needs to be done. Everyone who has just heard of Flagstaff for the first time needs to know the beauty and strength that resides in the community here. Those hurting from a distance need to know that these boys are loved and supported.

The candlelight dims, the crowd slowly disperses, the night closes. Colin Brough is alive in our hearts.



The video as well as photo collections can be found here.

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In Part One of this interview with the founder of neuroesthetics, Semir Zeki, he spoke about beauty from a neurological perspective. Here he defends his field after some recent academic and media criticisms.

FSH: A couple of painter friends have been turned off neuroesthetics after reading a critique by John Hyman. He said, "Neuroscience can explain some features of some paintings. For example, some of the color effects of impressionist paintings are explained by lateral inhibition. But the idea that there is a neurological theory of art in prospect is utterly implausible, in my view. The eye catching paradoxes Ramachandran and Zeki propose--that all art is caricature, that artists are neurologists--are in fact very weak ideas." Has John Hyman mischaracterized your intentions in his article, and what is your response to his critique?

SZ: I am sure that there are many who are suspicious of neuroesthetics, and this is good and healthy for the subject. I think, however, that there have been some criticisms made that are just much too weak to worry about. One of these is that we do not understand the difference between art and beauty, which of course suggests that we are a great deal more ignorant than we actually are. I do not know of any neurobiologist in this area who does not understand the distinction.


Averi Endow, (untitled work in progress), 2015, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches.

One statement of mine that appears to have irritated some art historians - and I am sorry for that - is that there can never be a complete theory of aesthetics unless one also takes into account the brain mechanisms that are engaged during aesthetic experiences. Please note that this statement is quite careful. It says that there cannot be a COMPLETE theory of aesthetics without taking into account the brain mechanisms that correlate with such experiences; it does not say that there cannot be aesthetic theories that ignore the brain. That can happen, and has indeed happened throughout the ages and continues to happen. But I believe that there are many weighty philosophers of aesthetics who would agree with that statement. For example, Edmund Burke defined beauty as "...a quality in bodies which acts upon the human mind through the intervention of the senses". If one accepts that brain activity is responsible to a significant extent for the mind and if one accepts that "senses" refers exclusively to the brain and the sensor organs which connect with it, then one ends up with a definition two thirds of which is related to the brain.

I would myself not say that a neurobiological theory of art is "utterly implausible". There may or there may not be such a neurobiologically based theory of aesthetics. The critical issue is that that is not the question that neuroesthetics addresses. Neuroesthetics merely asks what the neural mechanisms that are engaged in aesthetic appreciation, judgment and productivity are. These are very legitimate scientific questions which, to me at least, are unexceptionable.


Ruprecht von Kaufmann, The Taming of the Sphinx, 2013, acrylic & oil on canvas, 230 x 150 cm.

Nor does neuroesthetics address the question of what beauty is but only the question of what brain mechanisms are engaged during the experience of beauty (or ugliness). Studying brain activity that correlates with the experience of beauty simply adds to our knowledge. Scientifically, it is not very different from asking "what are the neural mechanisms that correlate with the experience of colour". From what we have learned about the latter in the past forty years, I think we can say with much confidence that there can be no complete theory of colour which does not take account the brain activity that is engaged when we see colours. I do not think that any biologist would disagree with that statement, and I have not encountered any philosopher or artist who disagrees with it either


Robin Hextrum, Swept Away, 2011, oil on canvas, 34 x 56 inches.

Studying the brain mechanisms involved in aesthetic experience is but one way of addressing the problem of aesthetics, but it is not the only way and no one has ever said so, at least no neurobiologist that I know of. There are many, many who have addressed the question of beauty without resolving the question satisfactorily. But if so many have addressed the question over so long a period of time, it implies on the one hand that there must be something explicable and on the other that they have not found satisfactory answers that encompass all aspects of aesthetics. Why would anyone wish to deny neurobiologists from addressing the same question and bringing new insights into it. Why deny neurobiologists a privilege that is extended to others. There is no reason at all to suppose that what we have uncovered is not of interest, at least in terms of how the brain functions. That it may not be of interest to (some) art historians or philosophers of aesthetics is another matter.

I am aware of the fact that some art historians are very dismissive of our efforts (It is worth noting here that artists, as opposed to (some) art historians, are usually much more hospitable to our ideas and interested in our results). Some philosophers have described neuroesthetics as "neuro-trash" and "neuro- rubbish". I cannot return the compliments, for I find much of what philosophers of aesthetics and historians of art say very interesting and illuminating, and of importance in framing questions in neuroesthetics, regardless of whether they think of our efforts as trash or not. No one, for example, has condensed better the critical question for neuroesthetics than the art critic Clive Bell. In general, I try to read what art historians and philosophers of aesthetics have written very carefully, take from it what is good and ignore the rest. In general, too, I find that there is more good stuff in what they have to say than bad.


Steve Galloway, Malevich Room, 2009, charcoal & pastel on paper, 28 x 38 inches.

This brings me to the question of " the artist as neurobiologist". Whatever criticism this has attracted, I think it would be true to say that very often artists have asked the same question as neurobiologists and tried to provide answers with their own methods. For example, Mondrian asked, "what are the essential constituents of all forms" and he settled on the vertical and horizontal straight lines. Physiologists have asked the very same question and, through physiological methods, have also settled on the straight line as the "building block" of forms. The early, analytic, phase of Cubism was an artistic experiment in exploring how a form maintains its identity when viewed in different conditions and from different angles and distances. This is the identical question - that relating to form constancy - which neurobiologists ask, but use different techniques to address the question. There is a great deal to be learned about the visual motion system of the brain from the products of kinetic artists, and they reached conclusions about visual motion which are very similar to the ones that neurobiologists reached much later. These examples can be multiplied, and it focuses attention on the common problems that we, and they, try to address - problems of perception in the broadest sense. When one concentrates on grand problems rather than disciplines, one begins to realise that there is often a common pursuit, which is not the same thing as saying that artists consciously assume the role of neurobiologists or think of themselves as neurobiologists.

FSH: In a Forbes Magazine article entitled "Have We Been Brainwashed by Neuroscience?" the author has this paragraph: "If you were a Martian who came to Earth and saw someone's legs move, you couldn't say that means X or Y. The legs could be moving because we're walking, running, kicking, bored or were just bitten by a bee. It could mean a thousand different things. The same is true in the brain, but the complexity is much greater. "It's a mistake to say that because this brain area became activated, it must mean the person is experiencing psychological state X," Lilienfeld says. "It's rarely, if ever, possible to do that and sophisticated imagers know that."
How confident are you that current research methods give an accurate reading of the meaning of a brain's activity?

SZ: I will address your question about whether we have been brainwashed by neuroscience. If we have, it is not because of neurobiologists who, on the whole, tend to be very circumspect and reticent in their conclusions. I do not believe that any neurobiologist considers or believes that an area of the brain acts in isolation to mediate any experience. I think that the most they would say is that an area is important for such an experience and that without it, the experience may be diminished or even absent - as in the examples of prosopagnosia (inability to recognize familiar faces), achromatopsia (inability to recognize colours) or akinetopsia (inability to recognize visual motion). But no neurobiologist believes that these areas would be capable of mediating such experiences if disconnected from the rest of the brain - at least I have never come across any neurobiologist who has said so. Hence it serves little purpose to attack neurobiologists for what they have not said.


Christopher Slaymaker, Separation, 2013, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches.

Some, and indeed perhaps many, have criticised the notion that the mind is not the brain, since they believe that the mind encompasses much more than the brain. I have no strong views on this. But I think that most - even the harshest exponents of this view - would concede that at least 25 percent of the mind is the result of brain activity. I would be happy to settle for even less - say 10 percent - and simply say that this is the ten percent that I am studying, leaving the remaining 90 percent for others to explore.

Semir Zeki is the headline speaker at TRAC2015, a representational art conference that takes place November 1-4 in Ventura, California.

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