this week in literature

JOHN CAGE: THE SIGHT OF SILENCE

John Cage, “New River Watercolor, Series I (#3), watercolor on parchment paper, 1988 (courtesy National Academy Museum)

National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 13, $15, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

The National Academy continues its transformation with the cleverly curated multimedia exhibition “John Cage: The Sight of Silence,” held in conjunction with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the seminal avant-garde artist. A controversial minimalist composer, music theoretician, Zen practitioner, I Ching follower, and longtime partner of Merce Cunningham, Cage was also a watercolorist, and the National Academy show features more than four dozen of his paintings, drawings, and etchings made primarily during his residency at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Virginia in the 1980s and early ’90s. A short documentary reveals Cage’s fascinating process using local stones, feathers, and the same ideas of chance and complex numbering systems he employed in creating his musical compositions, resulting in gentle, spiritual works with colorful circles on paper sometimes prepared with smoke. A vitrine contains some of the elements Cage used for the pieces, which were hung by the National Academy on the walls of two galleries by chance as well, through a series of four rolls of the dice. The show also includes Cage’s 1969 Plexiglas homage to Duchamp, “Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel”; one of his unique scores; and a 1976 self-portrait. “The Sight of Silence” is supplemented by several video presentations, highlighted by a 1960 appearance Cage made on the TV game show I’ve Got a Secret, performing “Water Walk,” a composition for water pitcher, iron pipe, bathtub, goose call, bottle of wine, electric mixer, whistle, sprinkling can, ice cubes, two cymbals, mechanical fish, quail call, rubber duck, tape recorder, vase of roses, seltzer siphon, five radios, bathtub, and grand piano. In addition, another monitor plays the John Cage section of Peter Greenaway’s 1983 documentary Four American Composers, which captures unusual live performances, interviews, and Cage’s interstitial “Indeterminacy Stories.” It all makes for a charming show that is likely to surprise Cage devotees as well as those unfamiliar with his oeuvre.

John Cage performs “Water Walk” on I’VE GOT A SECRET

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time,” Cage once explained. “There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” The National Academy is making sure there is always something to see and hear with “Chance Encounters,” a series of public programs ranging from book readings and panel discussions to live dance and concerts. Among the special events: On October 28 at 3:00, William Anastasi, who played chess with Cage every day for nearly fifteen years, will read from The Cage Dialogues: A Memoir; on November 10, Joan Retallack, who wrote Musicage: Cage Muses on Words Art Music with Cage, will present “Conversation with Cage”; on December 1, exhibition cocurator Ray Kass will direct a performance of Cage’s “STEPS” by Stephen Addis; and on January 5, Du Yun will perform “Water Walk.”

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812

The cast of NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 toasts creator Dave Malloy, who also plays Pierre (photo by Ben Arons)

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through November 17, $30, 8:00
212-352-3101
www.arsnovanyc.com

Inspired by a section of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 epic, War and Peace, Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is a rousing and rollicking immersive rock opera filled with treachery, deceit, romance, humor, and food and drink. Scenic designer Mimi Lien has transformed Ars Nova into an 1812 Moscow club, where patrons are seated together at small tables, banquettes, and a long, curved bar and greeted by a complimentary bottle of vodka and a plate of potato pierogis and pumpernickel bread. The action takes place everywhere, as the actors pop up on the bar, sit at a table, and wander through the audience, Bradley King’s expert lighting and Matt Hubbs’s sound design helping people locate the actors. Russian epics can get rather complicated, so the show opens with a prologue in which the characters introduce themselves one by one and set up the story, which involves a beautiful young woman, Natasha (Phillipa Soo), who is engaged to Andrey, who is off fighting the war against Napoleon, but Natasha soon falls for engaging cad Anatole (Lucas Steele), who is the brother of town tart Hélène (Amber Gray), who is married to the hapless cuckold Pierre (Malloy, who also plays piano in the live band, which is scattered throughout the space). “Everyone’s got nine different names,” the cast sings, “but look it up in your program / We’d appreciate it / Thanks a lot.” Indeed, the program includes a plot synopsis as well as a map of who’s who and how they are connected.

Natasha (Phillipa Soo) is caught in a dangerous love triangle in rollicking new rock opera (photo by Ben Arons)

The talented cast also features Brittain Ashford as Natasha’s well-meaning cousin Sonya; a scene-stealing Blake DeLong as Andrey’s crotchety father, Prince Bolkonsky; Amelia Workman as Natasha’s overprotective godmother, Marya D; Gelsey Bell as Andrey’s very serious sister, Mary; Nick Choksi as Anatole’s best friend, Dolokhov; and associate musical director Paul Pinto as troika driver Balaga. The bawdier first act is followed by a mellower second act highlighted by a show-stopping performance by Bell as Sonya laments what has befallen Natasha. The rock-solid music is played by cellists Brent Arnold and Raymond Sicam III, clarinetist Mark Dover, bassist John Murchison, oboist Sally Wall, and violist Pinky Weitzman, giving a Russian twist to the Jesus Christ Superstar-like score. Directed with flair and verve by Rachel Chavkin, who previously worked with Malloy (Beowulf — A Thousand Years of Baggage, Clown Bible) on the Obie-winning Three Pianos, the world premiere of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 offers adventurous theatergoers a fabulously good time, a unique experience that is fun for all in a wide variety of ways.

ROD STEWART

Barnes & Noble
555 Fifth Ave. at 46th St.
Tuesday, October 23, free, 5:30
212-697-3048
www.randomhouse.com
www.rodstewart.com

“Obviously I was a mistake,” rock legend Rod Stewart writes in the beginning of his brand-new tome, Rod: The Autobiography (Crown, October 23, 2012, $27). But it’s no mistake that Stewart is one of the greatest performers in rock-and-roll history, having released such hit albums as Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story, Blondes Have More Fun, Tonight I’m Yours, It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, and others over the course of a career that has spanned more than fifty years. In his book — which joins such other recent rock-star tell-alls as Keith Richards’s Life, Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace, and Pete Townshend’s Who I Am, Stewart shares tales of his youth, his friendships with the likes of Elton John and Ronnie Wood, his numerous sexual relationships, and the true story behind an ugly rumor that has followed him around for decades. “No one ever forgets their first view of Manhattan, rising into the sky ahead of them, nor their first drive up its concrete canyons,” he writes about his first trip to New York City, with Ron Wood. “Woody and I were in ecstasy – possibly even silenced momentarily, gawping at the scale of it all.” Rod the Mod has returned to New York City many times since then, selling out Madison Square Garden and other venues, and he will be back in town on October 23, making his only NYC literary appearance at 5:30 at the Fifth Ave. Barnes & Noble at 46th St., signing copies of Rod; there is a three-book maximum, and he will not be signing any other memorabilia. In addition, photography is not allowed once patrons approach the table, so you will not be able to take a posed picture with him. But how often do you get to be thisclose to the man behind “Maggie May,” “Hot Leg,” “Mandolin Wind,” “(I Know) I’m Losing You,” “Young Turks,” and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

EGON SCHIELE’S WOMEN

Galerie St. Etienne
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, October 23, free, 6:00 – 8:00
Exhibition runs October 23 – December 28 (Tuesday-Saturday), free
212-245-6734
www.gseart.com
www.randomhouse.de

Over the last several years, there has been a heightened interest in the always-popular and well-regarded Austrian artist Egon Schiele. In 2010, John Kelly gave the final performance of his award-winning theater piece Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte, which dealt with Schiele’s female muses, and one of the highlights of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival was Andrew Shea’s Portrait of Wally, a gripping documentary about the ownership of Schiele’s portrait of mistress Walburga “Wally” Neuzil. Now Schiele expert Jane Kallir, the codirector of Midtown’s Galerie St. Etienne, which boasts one of the largest collections of works by the artist, has written Egon Schiele’s Women, (Prestel, October 25, 2012, $80), a gorgeous examination of the women in Schiele’s life and on his canvases, placing his work in context of the history of Austrian art and evolving views on women’s freedom and sexuality. Kallir, who appears in Portrait of Wally, looks at Schiele’s relationship with his mother, his sister, various models, and his wife and sister-in-law. The book boasts more than 250 images, including dozens and dozens of splendid reproductions of paintings and drawings by Schiele (not limited to female subjects but also including glorious self-portraits and male figures) as well as works by Oskar Kokoschka, Gustave Klimt, Alfred Kubin, and Edvard Munch, archival photographs, a timeline, a bibliography, and an extensive index. In conjunction with the publication of the book, Galerie St. Etienne is opening the companion exhibit “Egon Schiele’s Women,” consisting of more than four dozen works by Schiele. “While Schiele, in his personal life, was hardly a feminist, in his art he freed women from the controlling male narrative that had heretofore shaped the interpretive discourse,” the exhibition essay explains. “His nudes, in particular, not only challenged the taboos of his time, but presaged the more fluid, open-ended approach to gender and sexuality that prevails today.” Kallir will be at the opening-night celebration of the exhibit, giving a gallery talk and signing copies of the book at 7:00. In addition, she will be at the American Jewish Historical Society on October 22 at 6:30 ($15), participating in the “Culture Brokers: Jews as Art Dealers and Collectors” panel discussion with Emily Bilski and Charles Dellheim.

LAST CHANCE: THE FEVERISH LIBRARY

“The Feverish Library” features a different kind of book collection (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Friedrich Petzel Gallery
537 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through October 20, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-680-9467
www.petzel.com

How can you go wrong with an exhibition whose main image is a still of Burgess Meredith as book lover Henry Bemis holding up his glasses at the end of the classic Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last”? Well, there actually isn’t time enough, as today is your last chance to see a celebration of a potentially dying breed, the printed book. Taking its name from a quote by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Feverish Library,” organized in cooperation with Matthew Higgs at Friedrich Petzel in Chelsea, features works by more than three dozen artists that incorporate books and the concept of reading. Gavin Brown creates a grid of paperbacks on the floor. Cindy Sherman photographs herself in front of a bookshelf. Richard Artschwager’s “Book” is a huge open wooden tome that can’t be read. Erica Baum’s “Author” shows a cross-section of printed pages. Liam Gillick’s “Prototype Construction of One Manuscript” is a wrapped pile of four reams of red paper. The all-star collection of artists also includes works by John Baldessari, Martin Creed, Hans-Peter Feldman, Taba Auerbach, Carol Bove, Martin Kippenberger, Richard Prince, Wade Guyton, Rachel Whiteread, Sean Landers, Wolfgang Tillmans, David Hammons, and others. In addition, in a nod to Joseph Kosuth, at the front is a collection of the favorite books of Petzel artists; Dana Schutz picks Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Nicola Tyson goes with Laurie Weeks’s Zippermouth, Troy Brauntuch selects Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Sarah Morris prefers Vladimir Nabokov’s Transparent Things, and John Stezakar chooses Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC IN CONVERSATION WITH MARCO ANELLI

Marco Anelli photographed every person who sat opposite Marina Abramović during her marathon staring sessions at MoMA (© Marco Anelli)

The Strand Book Store
Third Floor Rare Book Room
828 Broadway at 12th St.
Tuesday, October 16, 7:00 (must buy copy of book or $10 Strand gift card)
212-473-1452
www.strandbooks.com
www.marcoanelli.com

In the spring of 2010, Yugoslavian-born performance artist Marina Abramović sat in a chair in MoMA’s atrium for seventy-eight days, staring deeply into the eyes of individual visitors as part of the retrospective “The Artist Is Present.” It was a powerful sight to see, filled with energy and emotion. Earlier this year, Matthew Akers documented the immensely popular event in a film also titled The Artist Is Present, going behind the scenes of Abramović’s creative process. Now Italian photojournalist Marco Anelli, who specializes in photographing long-term projects, has published Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramović (September 2012, Damiani, $40), which captures every single person who sat across from Abramović and includes the amount of time they did so. (People were allowed to sit for as long as they wanted, from several minutes to many hours.) The book also features pieces by Abramović and curators Klaus Biesenbach and Chrissie Iles. On Tuesday, October 16, Abramović and Anelli, who pulled off quite a feat of duration himself, will discuss the project in a special presentation at the Strand. You must purchase a copy of the book or a $10 Strand gift card in order to attend what should be a fascinating discussion.

NEW YORK COMIC CON

New York Comic Con celebrates King of the Nerds and more at the Javits Center (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
655 West 34th St. (11th Ave. between 34th & 39th Sts.)
October 11-14, sold out
www.newyorkcomiccon.com

If you’ve ever attended New York Comic Con, you know that the biblical prediction “The geek shall inherit the earth” is certainly true. For four days at the Javits Center, sci-fi and comic-book nerds will descend on the far west side, lining up for autograph signings (beware: some require substantial additional fees), giveaways, film screenings, panel discussions, concerts, and other special events that get bigger and bigger every year. The 2012 edition, which is completely sold out, includes a bevy of A-list, B-list, and C-list celebrities; among the wide variety of guests are Batman’s Adam West and Burt Ward, Carrie Fisher, Bill Paxton, Stan Lee, Bruce Campbell, Chris Columbus, Christopher Lloyd, Dee Snider, Anne Rice, Guillermo Del Toro, Kevin Bacon, Julianne Moore, Kirk Hammett, Tess Gerritsen, Rob Corddry, Ned Vizzini, Sean Astin, Seth Green, Kim Harrison, Terry O’Quinn, Vanessa Williams, Sir Terry Pratchett, Kevin Smith, Ron English, and legendary nerds Curtis Armstrong and Robert Carradine. Below are some of our recommendations for this massive celebration of a lot more than just comic books.

Thursday, October 11

Neal Adams Spotlight, with Josh Adams and Neal Adams, 1A14, 3:45

Robert Kirkman Autographing, Booth #1229, 5:00 – 6:00

Comic Studies Conference: Power and Sexuality in Comics, with Beverly Taylor, Cameron McKee, Evan Johnson, Mark Head, and Sam Cannon, 1A07, 5:15

Friday, October 12

CBLDF: The History of Comics Censorship, with Charles Brownstein, 1A08, 11:00 am

Adam West and Burt Ward Spotlight, with Adam West and Burt Ward, 1A23, 12:15

Christopher Lloyd Q&A, with Christopher Lloyd, 1A10, 12:30

Sir Terry Pratchett Introduces . . . Dodger, with Sir Terry Pratchett, Unbound Stage, 1:00

AMC Presents Kevin Smith’s Comic Book Men, with Bryan Johnson, Kevin Smith, Michael Zapcic, Ming Chen, and Walter Flanagan, IGN Theater, 2:45

Joe Simon Memorial Celebration, with Angelo Torres, Carmine Infantino, Jim Simon, Mark Waid, Paul Levitz, and Stephen Saffel, 1A01, 5:15

Robot Chicken, with Clare Grant, Kevin Shinick, Matthew Senreich, and Seth Green, IGN Theater, 6:30

Kirk Hammett, Lead Guitarist for Metallica, Talks to Kevin Clement about His Passion for Collecting Monster Movie Memorabilia, with Kevin Clement and Kirk Hammett, 1A23, 9:00

Fans will be on their hands and knees, begging to get in to several special WALKING DEAD events at this year’s New York Comic Con

Saturday, October 13

Once More with Feeling: 15 Years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Jane Espenson, Jenny Frison, Rebekah Isaacs, Scott Allie, and Sierra Hahn, 1A21, 11:15 am

Mad about MAD, with Al Jaffee, Bob Wayne, Drew Friedman, John Ficarra, Peter Kuper, Ryan Flanders, and Sam Viviano, 1A23, 12:15

Bill Paxton and Johnn McLaughlin’s Seven Holes for Air Introduction, with Bill Paxton, David Uslan, Eric Reid, and John McLaughlin, 1E13, 12:30

Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, with Peter David and Stan Lee, 1E13, 3:00

Carrie, with Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Kevin Misher, and Kimberly Peirce, IGN Theater, 3:45

AMC’s The Walking Dead Panel Event, with Andrew Lincoln, Chandler Riggs, Chris Hardwick, Danai Gurira, David Morrissey, Gale Anne Hurd, Glen Mazzara, Michael Rooker, Norman Reedus, and Robert Kirkman, IGN Theater, 5:00

Sunday, October 14

666 Park Avenue Special Video Presentation and Q&A, with Dave Annable, David Wilcox, Erik Palladino, Helena Mattson, Matthew Miller, Mercedes Masöhn, Rachael Taylor, Robert Buckley, Samantha Logan, Terry O’Quinn, and Vanessa Williams, 1E13, 11:00 am

The Following Pilot Screening and Q&A, with Annie Parisse, James Purefoy, Kevin Bacon, Kevin Williamson, Marcos Siega, Natalie Zea, and Shawn Ashmore, 1E07, 12 noon

Josh Gates Q&A, with Josh Gates, 1A10, 1:30

Ian McDiarmid Spotlight, 1E13, 2:45