this week in literature

STEVIE VAN ZANDT: UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS

Who: Stevie Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen, Jay Cocks, Joel Selvin, Chris Columbus, Budd Mishkin
What: Interviews with Stevie Van Zandt in conjunction with the launch of his new memoir, Unrequited Infatuations (Hachette, $31)
Where: Multiple sites online and in person
When: September 28 – October 3, $5-$100
Why: “Silence. He was under a blanket in the back of the car on the floor in the crazy spooky silence. Nobody spoke. No radio. Just the lazy hum of the motor, and him alone with his thoughts. And ooh daddio, that was not his favorite thing. His two coconspirators were sneaking him past the military blockade into the black township of Soweto. The ‘native unrest,’ as the government liked to call it, erupted every few years, but lately it had become more frequent, and now, constant.” So begins Stevie Van Zandt’s new memoir, Unrequited Infatuations: Odyssey of a Rock and Roll Consigliere (A Cautionary Tale), as he writes in the third person about his secret trip into South Africa in 1984. “How the fuck did a half-a-hippie guitar player get here? For seven glorious years, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were Rock and Roll’s Rat Pack, and he happily and naturally played the Dean Martin role. If you were even thinking of throwing a party, you called him. That was the extent of his politics. He was the fun guy. The court jester. Always good for a laugh. Sex, booze, drugs, Rock and Roll, and . . . more sex. Yo bartender, another round for the house! A whole lot had to go sideways to find him under that blanket. . . . He chose to take the adventure instead of the money. What a putz.” Among the chapters in the book are “Epiphany,” “The Boss of All Bosses,” “The Punk Meets the Godfather,” “Freedom — No Compromise,” “Seven Years in the Desert,” and “Summer of Sorcery.”

Alternately known as Miami Steve, Little Steven, and Stevie for the last fifty years, Van Zandt is now detailing his unique life and career in the book, which launches this week with a series of in-person and online events. The memoir takes readers from the Jersey Shore to Sun City, from South Africa and Hollywood to Norway and the Super Bowl. A longtime member of the E Street Band and a ferocious political activist, Van Zandt also starred as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos — a role he helped create after HBO said no to him as Tony — wrote and produced songs for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, has been hosting the nationally syndicated radio show Little Steven’s Underground Garage since 2002, started Wicked Cool Records, played the lead in the Norwegian crime drama Lilyhammer, founded the nonprofit TeachRock to promote music education in schools, records and tours with his own band, Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, and is the founder of Renegade Nation, the umbrella company for many of his wide-ranging pursuits. I’ve had the privilege of meeting him several times over the years, interviewing him, and seeing him play live with the E Street Band and with the Disciples going back to the 1970s and ’80s, and he has never failed to impress as a performer and a straight-shooting human being.

There are five programs being held in conjunction with the publication of Unrequited Infatuations, pairing him with film critic and screenwriter Jay Cocks, music critic and author Joel Selvin, director and screenwriter Chris Columbus, broadcast journalist Budd Mishkin — oh, and Stevie’s boss and best friend, Bruce Springsteen. Below is the full schedule; take note of which events come with a copy of the book, in some cases pre-signed as well.

Tuesday, September 28
Stevie in conversation with Bruce Springsteen, $35 with unsigned book, $45 with signed book, 8:00

Wednesday, September 29
Stevie in conversation with Jay Cocks, online and at the 92nd St. Y, $20 online, $35 in person with book, 7:30

Thursday, September 30
Stevie in conversation with Joel Selvin, Commonwealth Club online, $5 general admission, $35 with book, 8:00

Friday, October 1
Stevie in conversation with Chris Columbus, Book Soup at the Colburn Music School, $40 with book, 7:00

Sunday, October 3
Stevie in conversation with Budd Mishkin, Montclair Literary Festival, $40 with signed book, $100 with signed book and VIP seating, 5:00

NYFF59: AMOS VOGEL CENTENARY RETROSPECTIVE

Dušan Makavejev’s WR: Mysteries of the Organism is part of NYFF centenary tribute to cofounder Amos Vogel

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Howard Gilman Theater, Francesca Beale Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
September 25 – October 2
www.filmlinc.org/nyff2021

“This is a book about the subversion of existing values, institutions, mores, and taboos — East and West, Left and Right — by the potentially most powerful art of the century,” Amos Vogel writes in his seminal 1974 book, Film as a Subversive Art. “During half the time spent at the movies, the viewer sees no picture at all; and at no time is there any movement. Without the viewer’s physiological and psychological complicity, the cinema would not exist. The ‘illusion’ of film — so platitudinously invoked by journalists — is thus revealed as a far more intricate web of deception, involving the very technology of the film process and the nature of its victim’s perceptions. Could it be precisely during the periods of total darkness — 45 out of every 90 minutes we see — that our voracious subconscious, newly nourished by yet another provocative image, ‘absorbs’ the work’s deeper meaning and sets off chains of associations?”

When I was in college, a bunch of guys in my fraternity told me about a course they were signed up for, what they called “Monday Night at the Movies.” They couldn’t believe they could sit in a theater and watch movies while earning college credit. For me, it became a life-changing experience. Little did I know at the time — before the internet and social media — but the professor, Amos Vogel, was one of the most important figures in bringing experimental and foreign works to America, as founder of Cinema 16 and cofounder of the New York Film Festival. I was surprised when I was accepted into NYU’s master’s program in cinema studies but eventually realized that it was Professor Vogel’s recommendation that certainly had more than something to do with it. For years, I would see him at NYFF and remind him that without his help, I would not have been there, writing about film and other forms of art and culture, particularly those on the cutting-edge, pushing boundaries and setting off chains of associations.

The fifty-ninth edition of the New York Film Festival is honoring the centennial of Vogel’s birth — he was born in Vienna on April 18, 1921, and passed away on April 24, 2012 — with a special Spotlight sidebar of seven programs paying tribute to his legacy. “Cinema 16” re-creates a May 1950 presentation that includes Sidney Peterson’s The Lead Shoes, Lester F. Beck’s Unconscious Motivation, John Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro, and three shorts by Oskar Fischinger. The other programs are dedicated to films Vogel screened at NYFF from 1963 to 1968: Glauber Rocha’s Barravento; Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, Věra Chytilová, and Jaromil Jireš’s five-part Pearls of the Deep; Tony Conrad’s The Flicker (which I remember well from class) paired with Peter Emmanuel Goldman’s Echoes of Silence (“The New American Cinema”); Lebert Bethune’s Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom, Santiago Álvarez’s Now, and David Neuman and Ed Pincus’s Black Natchez (“The Social Cinema in America, 1967”); 12th and Oxford Street Film Makers’ The Jungle, Jaime Barrios’s Film Club, and Maxine Tsosie and Mary J. Tsosie’s The Spirit of the Navajo (“Personal Cinema”); and Dušan Makavejev’s WR: Mysteries of the Organism — a still from the film, of star Milena Dravić pushing her right arm through an empty picture frame, standing next to a bunny on a chair, adorns the cover of Vogel’s book — and Robert Frerck’s Nebula II (“Film as a Subversive Art”).

Vogel’s approach to film was intrinsically linked to his approach to life, from the political to the personal. After taking the class, I began questioning the status quo everywhere, looking at my daily existence through a new lens, an outlook that continues to this day. “Art can never take the place of social action, and its effectiveness may indeed be seriously impaired by restrictions imposed by the power structure, but its task remains forever the same: to change consciousness,” he writes in his book. “When this occurs, it is so momentous an achievement, even with a single human being, that it provides both justifications and explanations of subversive art. The subversive artist performs as a social being. For if it is true that developments in philosophy, politics, physics, and cosmology have affected the evolution of modern art, and if the subversion of the contemporary filmmaker is thus fed by art itself, it is also directly related to society as a whole.”

He presciently argues back in 1974, “Wherever [the artist] turns, he sees exploitation and magnificent wealth, heart-rending poverty and colossal waste, the destruction of races and entire countries in the name of democracy or a new order, the denial of personal liberties on a global scale, the corruption of power and privilege, and the growing international trend toward totalitarianism. . . . It is in this sense that the subject of this book will always remain on the agenda, and that these pages are but a rough draft; for the subject of this book is human freedom, and its guardians, at all times and under all conditions, are the subversives.”

In his introduction to Paul Cronin’s 2014 biography, Be Sand, Not Oil: The Life and Work of Amos Vogel, Werner Herzog, a longtime friend of Vogel’s, writes, “We are, as a race, aware of certain dangers that surround us. We comprehend that global warming and overcrowding of the planet are real dangers for mankind. We have come to understand that the destruction of the environment is another enormous danger, that resources are being wasted at an extraordinary rate. But I believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude.”

Before taking in any of the NYFF programs, be sure to watch Cronin’s lovely 2004 documentary Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16, about Vogel (and his ever-present smile), his beloved wife, Marcia, their life in Greenwich Village, and his devotion to cinema, which you can stream for free above. It does not lack for adequate imagery.

NATIONAL ARTS CLUB HAPPENINGS: RICH LITTLE

Rich Little will shares his impressions of his life and career in free National Arts Club talk

Who: Rich Little
What: Livestreamed conversation
Where: National Arts Club online
When: Wednesday, September 15, free with RSVP, 6:00
Why: “How did I become an impersonator? Perhaps my mother was conceived by a Xerox machine!” Rich Little writes in his 2016 book, People I’ve Known and Been: Little by Little. In conjunction with the rerelease of the book and the November premiere of his new autobiographical one-man show, Rich Little Live, at the Laugh Factory at the Tropicana in Las Vegas, the Canadian-born comedian, who became a US citizen in 2010, will discuss his life and career in a livestreamed National Arts Club discussion on September 15 at 6:00. Little will talk about his many impressions, which famously include presidents (John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, both George Bushes, and Barack Obama), movie stars (Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood), and pop-culture figures (George Burns, Paul Lynde, Kermit the Frog, Andy Rooney, and Dr. Phil); go behind the scenes of his recent off-Broadway debut playing Nixon in Trial on the Potomac: The Impeachment of Richard Nixon at Theatre at St. Clements; and share show business anecdotes. Admission is free with advance RSVP.

GREGG BORDOWITZ: I WANNA BE WELL / BENYAMIN ZEV’S SUCCOS SPECTACULAR!

Gregg Bordowitz, Pestsäule (after Erwin Thorn), mixed media, 2021 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

GREGG BORDOWITZ: I WANNA BE WELL
MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens
Virtual performance lectures September 17-19, free with advance RSVP
Exhibition continues Thursday – Monday through October 11, $5-$10 (free for NYC residents)
www.moma.org
www.greggbordowitz.com

At the heart of the MoMA PS1 exhibition “Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well” are two disparate images. On your way into the building itself and in the gallery, you will see a large banner declaring, “The AIDS Crisis Is Still Beginning.” Meanwhile, at the top of Bordowitz’s 2021 mixed-media sculpture Pestsäule (after Erwin Thorn), inspired by a seventeenth-century plague monument in Vienna as well as the murder of George Floyd, the AIDS epidemic, and the Covid-19 pandemic, is a blank protest sign, raised up by a man in a medical mask surrounded by a maelstrom of bodies, a murderous cherub, and sandbags on the floor, like a warped scene from Les Miz. “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Mildred (Peggy Maley) asks Johnny (Marlon Brando) in the 1954 film The Wild One. “Whadda you got?” Johnny replies.

Born in Brooklyn in 1964 and raised in Queens — home base for the Ramones, whose 1977 song “I Wanna Be Well” from the Rocket to Russia album gives the exhibit its name — Bordowitz, who has been living with HIV/AIDS for more than three decades, was an early member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which was founded in 1987. He has been documenting his own life and the global AIDS crisis through film and video, poetry, sculpture, lectures, and poetry, much of which is on view at MoMA PS1 through October 11. His 2014 twenty-four-part poem Debris Fields lines the walls of the galleries, amid such works as self-portraits in mirror, Tom McKitterick’s black-and-white photographs of Bordowitz and others at AIDS protests in the late 1980s, the corner wall drawing and sculpture installation Kaisergruft (centered by the word Sympathy), and Drive, a repurposed vintage derby car stickered with Big Pharma logos.

The show also features several of Bordowitz’s films, including the 1993 autobiographical documentary Fast Trip, Long Drop, which deals with his contracting HIV, coming out to his parents, a friend getting breast cancer, and the tragic deaths of his grandparents; the 2001 documentary Habit, about the AIDS epidemic in South Africa; the five-minute The Fast That I Want video he made last year with Morgan Bassichis for his family’s virtual Yom Kippur; and the vastly entertaining Only Idiots Smile, a 2017 lecture commissioned for the New Museum presentation “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” and that, at only twenty-two minutes, is far too short as Bordowitz discusses his relationship with his father, Judaism, Eastern European men kissing on the lips, and homophobia.

You can see much more of Bordowitz this week when MoMA hosts several special events held in conjunction with “I Wanna Be Well.” On September 13 (and available on demand through September 27, for members only), “Modern Mondays: An Evening with Gregg Bordowitz and Jean Carlomusto” consists of a live discussion between the longtime friends, artists, collaborators, and activists, along with videos they made in the late 1980s for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City. From September 14 to 28, MoMA Film will stream Bordowitz’s 1996 reimagination of Nicolai Erdman’s 1932 long-banned play The Suicide, also for members only.

From September 17 to 19, Benyamin Zev’s Succos Spectacular! comprises a trio of livestreamed performances, free with advance RSVP, specifically taking place after Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), the ten Days of Awe (meditation and reflection), and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) and before Sukkot (the Harvest Festival and the Feast of Tabernacles). The three shows — “The Rock Star” on Friday at 7:00, “The Rabbi” on Saturday at 7:00, and “The Comedian” on Sunday at 4:00 — feature Bordowitz as his alter ego, Benyamin Zev (his Hebrew name), a Jewish entertainer, stand-up comic, and tummler, hanging out in a Sukkah, joined by special guests and the klezmer ensemble Isle of Klezbos. “Any laughter is purely accidental,” Bordowitz says on the MoMA website. “My performances disturb, upset, and resist the pressures to conform and align genders and ethnicities within a fascist phantasy of American nationalism.” And finally, on October 2 at 5:00, in person and online, Bordowitz will launch his new book from Triple Canopy, Some Styles of Masculinity, at the Artbook @ MoMA PS1 Bookstore, where he will speak with poet, professor, and cultural theorist Fred Moten.

SMITHSONIAN LECTURE BY SETH DAVID RADWELL — AMERICAN SCHISM: HEALING A DIVIDED NATION

Seth David Radwell discusses American Schism with Tucker Carlson

AMERICAN SCHISM: HEALING A DIVIDED NATION
Smithsonian Associates lecture
Monday, September 13, $25, 6:45
www.si.edu
americanschismbook.com

During the pandemic, I had a regular Zoom happy hour with a group of longtime friends going back to nursery school and grade school. Our politics were all similar, so we avoided fights about Trump, Fauci, the Supreme Court et al. One of our regulars was Seth David Radwell, who, following a successful business career that has included being the head of e-Scholastic and Bookspan and president and CEO of direct-to-consumer company Guthy-Renker, was so disturbed by the state of political discourse across the nation that he wrote a book about it.

American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation (Greenleaf, June 29, $25.95) examines our current partisan situation, and inability to talk to one another about virtually anything without it becoming political, through the lens of the two Enlightenments of the eighteenth century, the Radical and the Moderate. Radwell is on a furious book tour, making appearances on numerous podcasts and online interview shows. On September 13 at 6:45, he will deliver a lecture, “American Schism: Healing a Divided Nation,” as part of the Smithsonian Associates streaming series.

Radwell writes in the prologue of his book, “As I hunkered down at home to weather the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, I struggled to overcome the sense of shock at how suddenly and utterly our world had been turned upside down. But as I contemplated my state of mind, oscillating rapidly between depression, anxiety, and frustration, I sensed that well before the onslaught of the pandemic I had already fallen into a profound state of disillusionment. As the world came to a halt, the health crisis simply gave me the time and space to realize it. The root cause of this disillusionment was related to the shattering of an ideal image that I had, perhaps, clung on to for far too long.”

He continues, “How had it come to be that over the last four years my entire conception of the American credo had crumbled? My vision of America was firmly rooted in the ethos of both freedom and equality; my America was a place where everyone had a fair shot at building a rewarding and fulfilling life, where each individual could define their own idiosyncratic version of success, and where we collectively formed a country of shared values with mutual respect for individual differences. That vision felt unambiguously inconsistent with the America of 2020. Just how and when did my America disappear? Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth? If it did exist, how did it disintegrate so quickly in just a few years? Or was its ruin a slow process of decay that began undetected (by me) much earlier? I was determined to explore these questions, to understand the origins of my disillusionment.”

Radwell not only searches out the causes but provides answers for how we can move forward together. One of his themes is getting the two Americas to talk to each other in a reasonable manner. He brought this plan into reality recently when he sat down for a long-form interview on Tucker Carlson Today, for which some of his readers chastised him. “I received an onslaught of feedback related to my appearance on Tucker Carlson Daily on Fox Nation and the clip shown on his evening cable show,” he wrote in an email blast to his subscribers. “Some chided me for appearing on Fox since the station has a ‘track record of misinformation and propaganda masquerading as news,’ as one person wrote me. Others congratulated me for having the ‘courage’ to appear on such a venue.” The divide is everywhere.

Amid a flurry of interviews and his preparation for the Smithsonian lecture, Radwell took the time to answer questions about the Counter-Enlightenment, reason and unreason, top-down populism, Tucker Carlson, fine wine, and more.

twi-ny: You’ve been working on the book for several years; what effect did the pandemic lockdown have on your research and writing?

seth david radwell: It’s been about three years, although I had developed some of the ideas before that. I have been reading and researching the thesis actively starting in late 2018. I had much material in the form of notes up through 2019. But it was March 2020 when COVID first hit that I sat down and began writing every day in intense twelve-hour sessions. Since that time I have been working on it full-time.

twi-ny: In addition to discussing the two Enlightenments, you also delve into the Counter-Enlightenment, tracing it to the Second Great Awakening, the religious fervor of the first decades of the nineteenth century, as well as anti-elite and anti-intellectual sentiments. Would you characterize the American right’s embrace of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán, or Tucker Carlson’s recent encomium to the Taliban, as an expression of top-down populism (populist sentiments exploited by elite actors for their own ends), the Counter-Enlightenment, or something more ominous?

sdr: There is certainly a global trend toward autocracy characterized by “strongmen” who win some sort of election to gain legitimacy but then consolidate, usurp and abuse power, and begin curtailing the freedoms associated with an open liberal society. The American right has embraced this. One of the tools that most of these autocrats deploy, along with those associated with Trumpism, is the top-down populism described in the book.

At the same time, as I discuss in the book, populism is complex — there are many strains of it, often with both positive and negative characteristics. The top-down populism we are talking about here is an emotional appeal that plays on people’s fears of both the “other” (immigrants, African Americans, Latinos, etc.) as well as the elite establishment (who they perceive has ignored their concerns for too long). Autocratic politicians are hostile to elite institutions, and to expertise in general, and pronounce these feelings regularly to gain support and relate to their base. Because this later trend rejects expertise overall, it is also hostile to truth and data. That is the Counter-Enlightenment.

twi-ny: In the current political climate, do you have a recommendation for accommodating both Counter-Enlightenment forces as well as the Radical and Moderate Enlightenment thinkers, or must one be decisively excluded from power?

sdr: “Counter-Enlightenment forces” can be a confusing phrase. For example, most religious movements are based in faith and rely less on reason. So these are Counter-Enlightenment forces that are very much involved in the lives of most Americans. But our republic was founded on the premise that these domains should be kept outside the civic arena — with a firm separation of church from state. This has been frequently violated in our history — as one example, Billy Graham was quite close and influential to many presidents.

twi-ny: In researching and writing the book, did you reconsider a specific political belief you have held?

sdr: Yes, I had always considered myself fairly left leaning, but I began to appreciate aspects of conservative/libertarian philosophy more thoroughly.

twi-ny: How did your business experience help you when marketing the book?

sdr: Well, there is no question that my marketing expertise has played a role. But most ventures I led professionally (i.e., Proactiv) were multimillion-dollar brands with huge advertising budgets. My marketing of the book has been mostly guerrilla tactics and “hand selling” that I am doing personally as a labor of love.

twi-ny: As part of that hand selling, you’ve been interviewed on many podcasts, in lieu of in-person readings and signings. Were you a podcast listener prior to the pandemic? If so, what are some of your favorites?

sdr: Yes, I love podcasts, mostly of the NPR variety — I was a religious listener to Ezra Klein on VOX Media.

twi-ny: You recently appeared on Tucker Carlson Today and managed to have a productive and engaging discussion. What was that experience like?

sdr: He was extremely generous, thoughtful, and open to the ideas in the book. Quite a different persona than his cable “news” show at night.

twi-ny: Did meeting him in that way change any feelings you previously might have had about him?

sdr: He is very intelligent and deeply appreciative of the ideas in American Schism. His on-air celebrity status is an entirely different matter.

twi-ny: On September 13 at 6:45, you will be delivering the Smithsonian lecture “American Schism: Healing a Divided Nation.” What will you be concentrating on?

sdr: The session will summarize certain aspects of the book but will focus on the path forward out of this mess, delineating both structural changes and mindset changes that can begin the healing process.

twi-ny: Is America in as much trouble as it seems?

sdr: The fundamental change begins with taking back control of the debate from the extremes to the frustrated majority.

twi-ny: American Schism has been a great success, reaching #1 on Amazon. What were your initial goals in writing the book?

sdr: It has been doing well, but remember it has gone to #1 on Amazon in very niche categories, like rational philosophy and civics. In the broader areas such as comparative politics and political parties, it has often been a top-ten bestseller.

twi-ny: What’s your next step?

sdr: I would like to build a ground-up movement, which I call Fight Unreason with Reason, by sharing the ideas in the book with a larger audience. So I am hopeful the book will gain more momentum in the months forward. But we are off to a good start. My biggest hope is the viral marketing element — that readers who appreciate the ideas share them. For example, of the seventy-five reviews on Amazon, sixty-nine are five-star, so most readers like the book so far.

twi-ny: You’re a gourmand and wine connoisseur with a partner who knows his way around the kitchen. What is the latest amazing meal the two of you have had at home, and what wine did you have to go with it?

sdr: I am very lucky to have such an excellent cook as a partner. Tonight he is preparing roasted Cornish hens with braised vegetables. I will open a Grand Cru burgundy to pair, but I haven’t picked it yet.

twi-ny: You are also a big-time theater and opera fan. Have you been to any live indoor performances yet?

sdr: I have not yet been back to performances, with the exception of Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga at Radio City. I love opera and theater and I miss both terribly. But the positive is that without them, I have had more time to focus on the book.

PROJECT NUMBER ONE: NO PLAY

IFE OLUJOBI: NO PLAY
Digital download $10, print copy $20
sohorep.org
theaterworknow.com/the-book

During the pandemic lockdown, Soho Rep. created Project Number One, a series of eight presentations about artistic expression for which theater makers were paid a salary and provided with health insurance. The program ran from May through July and included David Ryan Smith’s autobiographical The Story of a Circle, an online journey to his childhood home in the Blue Ridge Mountains; Carmelita Tropicana’s That’s Not What Happened, a podcast tracing her queer Cuban roots; David Mendizábal’s Eat Me!, constructed around the Ecuadorian ritual of consuming guaguas de pan; Stacey Derosier’s Peep Show and Becca Blackwell’s The Body Never Lies, both of which took place at Soho Rep.’s Walker St. space; Jillian Walker’s The Orange Essays, consisting of readings and a live discussion; and an excerpt from Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s upcoming Public Obscenities.

Project Number One concluded with Ife Olujobi’s No Play, a book that explores the impact the coronavirus crisis has had throughout the artistic community. Olujobi is a Nigerian American playwright whose play Jordans was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize; during the lockdown, she contributed two pieces to “The 24 Hour Plays: Viral Monologues!,” If you can see it with Javier Muñoz and Run Me Over with Ato Blankson-Wood. For the book, she surveyed and/or interviewed more than one hundred writers, directors, artists, teachers, critics, composers, administrators, technicians, producers, and others whose work is connected to theater, including the seven other Project Number One creators and me.

I first filled out the online survey, which asked such questions as “How did you make money before the pandemic? If that has changed, how do you make money now?,” “Has your creative working process changed at all during quarantine? Has your relationship to your creative work changed in light of COVID and the events of the last year?,” and “How does ‘doing the work’ of advancing racial and social justice intersect with the other forms of work you engage in, if at all? Does this work impact your ability to complete other forms of work? Do your other forms of work impact your ability to engage in this work?” It made me instantly realize that I was probably in a different situation from most of the others who would be taking the survey, as I am a straight white male with a full-time job outside the theater industry; twi-ny is really a labor of love.

Olujobi understands this is not a scientific undertaking. “This endeavor is not, and was never meant to be, any kind of demographically comprehensive or definitive statement on ‘how theater people are feeling right now,’” she writes. “I have never taken on a project quite like this before, and my information gathering methods were unofficial and imprecise and resulted in a fascinating, if not always easily contextualized, array of responses from participants. . . . Despite the inherent faults of my process, I am thankful for the connections I made and can stand behind the relative diversity of the voices included across race, age, gender identity, disability, vocation, and career level.”

I was somewhat surprised when Olujobi later asked if I wanted to be interviewed, but I immediately agreed and was glad I did. (I was one of eleven participants who filled out the survey and were interview subjects.) We had an eye-opening talk on Zoom in which we did a deep dive into my privilege, exploring such questions as “How much time do you spend working for money?,” “How has the pandemic affected your creative working process?,” “How have you engaged with Zoom and ‘virtual’ theater, either as a creator or a viewer?,” and “What does ‘doing the work’ mean to you?” I responded openly and honestly, and Olujobi never let me off the hook if I unintentionally skirted the issue. All along the way, Olujobi made it clear that there are no wrong answers.

Now that the book is out, it is even more eye-opening to read the other participants’ answers. “COVID shut everything down, and when I couldn’t work I found myself losing my purpose. Losing my identity. Which made me look at my creative work differently. It was difficult. Lots of sleepless nights,” actor-artist Alana Bowers says. Playwright-actor Jake Brasch explains, “I’m collecting unemployment and I’m teaching a section of fifth-grade playwriting and I’m under a couple of commissions. [Pre-pandemic] I was a birthday party clown on the weekends, and also lived in a work-trade situation that fell apart because of COVID in which I walked the dogs for discounted rent.” And playwright Dan Giles admits, “I guess my job is twenty-eight hours a week, or twenty to twenty-eight hours depending on the week. And then the writing stuff sometimes feels like I’m writing for money and sometimes not. And that can either be all-consuming or it can be like half-an-hour working and then four hours of staring at a wall, full of despair.”

There are not a lot of fans of Zoom theater. While I fully engaged with online shows, having watched more than a thousand since March 2020 (theater, dance, music, art, film, food), I was in the minority. “I have not watched any Zoom theater, and am not that interested in seeing theater virtually,” one anonymous respondent says. Artist-researcher Janani Balasubramanian replies “I honestly have not, with the exception of work made by my friends, logged on or watched a lot of livestreams or Zooms. I basically don’t have the capacity after my work days to do additional online commitments because I already have so many during day-to-day work. I kinda wanna throw my computer in the Gowanus Canal, is a real feeling I have on certain days.”

But Olujobi goes beyond the pandemic, also delving into why the participants got into theater in the first place, what they love about it, and what they would change going forward. Reading other people’s origin stories is energizing, summed up by writer-actor Harron Atkins remembering the exact moment he decided, “I’m gonna do this for the rest of my life.”

When it comes to “the most pressing work that needs to be done right now,” theater maker Mattie Barber-Bockelman gets straight to the point: “Redistribution of wealth.” Writer Melis Aker says, “Tackling income inequality and segregation that has only reinforced racist segregation. Divesting and reinvesting. Money flow needs to change for corporations to change their values.” Playwright Joshua Young declares, “Erasing the way capital informs primacy. It’s not enough to have more diverse boards or employees. We’ve done all this work to dismantle the systems of power. We can’t stop now.”

Ife Olujobi explores the effects of the pandemic lockdown on theater professionals in No Play

Diversity and equality are at the heart of what comes next. Actor-singer Jenna Rubaii advises, “Everyone in the world needs to start looking at each other as equals.” Set designer and educator Carolyn Mraz says, “Getting white people to shut up (me included) and decenter themselves, so that we can listen, step back, and figure out how to give our support where it can be useful in support of BIPOC voices and leaders.” Writer, actor, and comedian Obehi Janice declares, “People need to leave Black women alone and figure out their own shit.” And artistic director RJ Tolan concludes, “We have to try to renovate the story that America tells itself about itself. If there’s one thing that theater is, it’s sitting in a room and telling some stories and hopefully you have an influence on people. That’s definitely moving the sand dune with tweezers.”

As Olujobi explains in her introduction, “The confluence of the gig economy and the era of identity politics has caused an increasingly consequential melding of personal and professional identities, so that the question is no longer just ‘what do you do?’ but, ‘who are you?’ and therefore, ‘what can you do?’ or, more directly, ‘what are you doing?’ Of course these questions are not exclusive to the performing arts, but as a result of the complete shuttering of theater as we knew it since March 2020, they feel acute, almost violent to pose to anyone who, at one point or another, has called themselves a theater artist.” She adds, “What was meant to be an excavation of the present ended up being just as much about the past and future of financial stability, physical and mental health, survival for marginalized peoples, and the ways that a career in theater presents these necessities as luxuries.” (Proceeds from the sale of the book, available in a print or digital edition, and the accompanying Generator zine go to Lenape Center, Black Trans Liberation, See Lighting Foundation, and Access Acting Academy.)

With Broadway and off Broadway reopening, these issues are more relevant than ever, not only in theater but in the world outside as we (too slowly?) emerge from the pandemic. The coronavirus crisis has forced us all to look deep inside ourselves, figure out who we are and what we want — or, more important, what we need. Olujobi has done a great service by putting this book together and investigating this moment in time, just as the best theater does, even if the work is called No Play.

FRICK MADISON AND THE SLEEVE SHOULD BE ILLEGAL

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Comtesse d’Haussonville, oil on canvas, 1845 (Purchased by the Frick Collection, 1927)

FRICK MADISON AND THE SLEEVE SHOULD BE ILLEGAL
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
Thursday – Sunday, $12-$22 (includes free guide), 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.frick.org/madison

For the first twelve months of the pandemic, the Frick, my favorite place in New York City, was my “virtual home-away-from-home” when it came to art. And I mean that in a different way than Lloyd Schwartz does in his piece on Johannes Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl in the recently published book The Sleeve Should Be Illegal & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick, in which the poet and classical music critic uses that phrase to describe what the museum, opened to the public in 1935 at Fifth Ave. and Seventieth St., meant to him when he was growing up in Brooklyn and Queens. The book features more than sixty artists, curators, writers, musicians, and philanthropists waxing poetic about their most-admired work in the Frick Collection.

A native of Brooklyn myself, I am referring specifically to the institution’s online presence during the coronavirus crisis. It had closed in March 2020 for a major two-year renovation, moving its remarkable holdings to the nearby Breuer Building on Seventy-Fifth and Madison, the former home of the Whitney from 1966 to 2014, then host to the Met Breuer for an abbreviated four years. Starting in April 2020 and continuing through last month, chief curator Xavier F. Salomon (and occasionally curator Aimee Ng) gave spectacular prerecorded illustrated art history lectures on Fridays at 5:00 focusing on one specific work in the museum’s holdings; thousands of people from around the world tuned in live to learn more about these masterpieces. Two questions added a frisson of excitement for devoted fans: What cocktail would the curator select to enjoy with the painting, sculpture, or porcelain/enamel object that week? And which smoking jacket would Xavier be rocking? These sixty-six marvelous “Cocktails with a Curator” episodes can still be seen here.

For more than half my life, the Frick has been the spot I go to when I need a break from troubled times, a respite from the craziness of the city, a few moments of peace amid the maelstrom. Going to the Frick, which was designed by Carrère and Hastings and served as the home of Pennsylvania-born industrialist Henry Clay Frick from 1914 until his death in 1919 at the age of sixty-nine, was like visiting old friends, reflecting on my existence among familiar and welcoming surroundings. There is still nothing like sitting on a marble bench in John Russell Pope’s Garden Court, with its lush plantings, austere columns, and lovely fountain, in between continuing my intimate, personal relationships with cherished canvases. In Sleeve, philanthropist Joan K. Davidson writes about Giambattista Tiepolo’s Perseus and Andromeda, “Entering the Frick, the visitor tends to head to the galleries where the Fragonards, Titians, El Greco, the great Holbeins, and other Frick Top Treasures are to be found. Or, perhaps, you turn left to the splendid English portraits in the Dining Room. But not so fast, please. You could miss my picture!” I am not nearly so generous as Davidson, not at all ready to share my prized works with others, preferring alone time with each.

After being teased by Salomon’s discussion of Rembrandt’s impossibly powerful 1658 self-portrait, which gave a glimpse of where it is on display at Frick Madison, it was with excitement and more than a little trepidation that I finally ventured toward Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist building, worried it would feel like seeing friends in a hotel where they’re staying while their kitchen is being remodeled. As artist Darren Waterston admits in his piece on Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, about his first pilgrimage to the museum, “I remember feeling a nervous anticipation as I approached the Frick, as if I were meeting a lost relative or a new lover for the first time.” He now makes sure to return at least once every year.

In addition, I was poring over Sleeve, a cornucopia of Frick love. Many of the rapturous entries are just as much about the institution itself and how the pieces are arranged as the chosen object. Writing about the circle of Konrad Witz’s Pietà, short story writer and translator Lydia Davis explains, “Because of the reliable permanence of the collection — the paintings usually hanging where I knew to find them — they became engraved in my memory. Over time, of course, I changed, so my experience of the paintings also changed.” Fashion designer Carolina Herrera, praising Goya’s Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna, notes, “I would love to move in. And, as one does, I would like to move the furniture around, hang the paintings in different places, and put some of the objects away, to change them from time to time.”

While I had contemplated moving in, I had never considered rearranging anything, although I was blown away when, after decades of seeing Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Sir Thomas More in the Living Hall, where it looks over at Holbein’s portrait of More’s archnemesis, Sir Thomas Cromwell, well above eye level and separated by a fireplace and El Greco’s exquisite painting of St. Jerome, I was able to belly up to the canvas at my height when it was displayed temporarily in the Oval Room, leaving me, as curator Edgar Munhall pointed out on the audio guide, “weak in the knees.” Entering Frick Madison, my thoughts zeroed in on my impending rendezvous with Holbein and More.

Unknown artist (Mantua?), Nude Female Figure (Shouting Woman), bronze with silver inlays, early 16th century (Henry Clay Frick Bequest)

Five people melt over the More portrait in Sleeve; in fact, the title of the book comes from novelist Jonathan Lethem’s foray into the work. Nina Katchadourian raves, “Every time I visit the Frick, I go to the Living Hall to look at Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More. I love it as a painting, but I also see it as the first spark in a series of chain reactions that happen among objects in the room. . . . It is a staging of masterpieces that is itself a masterpiece of staging.” I quickly found the canvas, in its own nook with Cromwell, as if there were nothing else in the world but the two of them. You can get dangerously close to the breathtaking canvases, glorying in Holbein’s remarkable brushwork, his unique ability to capture the essence of each man in a drape of cloth, a ring, a stray hair, a bit of white fabric sticking out from a fur collar.

Utterly pleased and satisfied with the placement of the Holbeins — while I did miss all the finery usually surrounding them, seeing them both so unencumbered just felt right — I continued my adventure to track down other old friends and make new ones. St. Francis in the Desert, a work that demands multiple viewings, with new details emerging every time, usually hangs across from More, but here it has its own well-deserved room. Referring to St. Francis’s position in the painting, hands spread to his sides, looking up at the heavens, artist Rachel Feinstein writes, “That moment of isolation is fascinating in the context of the situation we are in now because of COVID-19. Our family of five may not be living alone in a cave right now, but due to the current circumstances, we have turned more inward, like St. Francis. Looking at this image and its sharp clarity during this time of fear and uncertainty is very soothing and inspirational.”

Trips to the Frick bring up childhood memories for many Sleeve contributors (Lethem, Moeko Fujii, Bryan Ferry, Stephen Ellcock, Julie Mehretu); describing seeing Rembrandt’s Polish Rider for the first time in high school, novelist Jerome Charyn remembers, “He could have been a hoodlum from the South Bronx with his orange pants and orange crown. . . . I left the Frick in a dream. I had found a mirror of my own wildness on Fifth Avenue, a piece of the Bronx steppe.” Donald Fagen and Abbi Jacobson recall lost love, while Frank, Edmund De Waal, and Adam Gopnik bring up Marcel Proust. Arlene Shechet and Wangechi Mutu find the feminist power in the early sixteenth century sculpture Nude Female Figure (Shouting Woman). “Making a small work is an unforgiving process,” Shechet writes. “There is no room for missteps, and the Shouting Woman is an example of exquisite perfection, her bold demeanor wrought with great feeling and delicacy. The plush palace that is the Frick becomes eminently more compelling when I visit with this giant of a sculpture.”

Artist Tom Bianchi gets political when delving into Goya’s The Forge, a harrowing canvas that depicts blacksmiths hard at work as if in hell. “The presence of The Forge in the collection is an anomaly,” Bianchi explains. “Frick’s fortune was built on the labor of steelworkers, whose union he infamously opposed. His reduction of the salaries of his workers resulted in the Homestead strike in 1892, in which seven striking workers and three guards were killed and scores more injured. Ultimately, Frick replaced the striking workers, mostly southern and eastern European immigrants, with African American workers, whom he paid a 20 percent lower wage. One wonders if Frick appreciated the irony of the inclusion of this painting among his Old Masters.”

Agnolo Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano), Lodovico Capponi, oil on panel, 1550–55 (The Frick Collection; Henry Clay Frick Bequest)

I’ve always had a minor issue with how the Frick’s three Vermeers, Officer and Laughing Girl, Mistress and Maid, and Girl Interrupted at Her Music, are displayed; two of the three can usually be seen in the South Hall, above furniture, in a narrow space that is easy to pass by, especially if you are checking out the opposite Grand Staircase, which will at last be open to the public when the Frick reopens in mid-2023.

There are no such obstacles at Frick Madison, where all three are in the same room on the second floor. Together the Vermeers are feted by Fujii, Frank, Vivian Gornick, Gregory Crewdson, Susan Minot, Judith Thurman, and Schwartz. Meanwhile, various artists are completely shut out of Sleeve accolades, including Hans Memling (Portrait of a Man), Frans Hals (Portrait of an Elderly Man and Portrait of a Woman), François Boucher (The Four Seasons), Edgar Degas (The Rehearsal), John Constable (Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds), Carel Fabritius (The Goldfinch), François-Hubert Drouais (The Comte and Chevalier de Choiseul as Savoyards), Paolo Veronese (Wisdom and Strength), and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (La Promenade). Rembrandt’s aforementioned self-portrait receives five nods (Roz Chast, Rineke Dijkstra, Diana Rigg, Jenny Saville, Mehretu), while Ingres’s Comtesse d’Hassuonville nets three (Jed Perl, Firelei Báez, Robert Wilson).

But the biggest surprise for me was the popularity of Bronzino’s Lodovico Capponi, chosen by Susanna Kaysen, David Masello, Daniel Mendelsohn, Annabelle Selldorf, and Catherine Opie. When I saw it at Frick Madison, I had no recollection whatsoever of the 1550s vertical oil painting of a page with the Medici court; it felt like I was seeing it for the very first time. It’s an arresting picture, highlighted by loose background drapery, the curious position of the fingers of each hand, the privileged look in his eyes, and, of course, the ridiculously funny codpiece/sword. As I stood in front of it, it did not strike me the way other portraits at the Frick do; in her “Cocktails with a Curator” entry on the piece, Ng says with a big smile, “This one really is one of my most favorite, if not favorite, works at the Frick. . . . I know I’m not the only one. . . . This is a painting that’s at the heart of many people who are close to the Frick.” When I go back to Frick Madison, which will be very soon, I’m going to spend more time with Lodovico, and I am already preparing myself to make a beeline for it when the original Frick reopens. I clearly must be missing something, as Lodovico has taken a brief sojourn to the Met, where it is not only included in the major exhibition “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570,” which runs through October 11, but is the cover image of the catalog.

Selldorf writes in her piece on Lodovico, “Art informs the space, but the space also informs the art.” Whether it’s the Frick Madison or the Frick on Fifth, “The genius, beauty, and mystery behind its doors may change your life,” Herrera promises. It’s changed myriad lives over its nine-decade existence, from other artists’ to just plain folks’ like you and me. You’re bound to fall in “love at first sight” — as New York Philharmonic principal cellist Carter Brey describes his initial encounter with George Romney’s Lady Hamilton as “Nature” — with at least one work at the Frick, something that will stay with you for a long time, an objet d’art you’ll visit again and again and develop a meaningful relationship with over the years. Just be sure to stay out of my way when I’m reconnecting with Sir Thomas More.