THE BURIAL 10/23/23

 I recommend THE BURIAL which I viewed on Amazon Prime with Jamie Foxx as Willie E. Gary and Tommy Lee Jones as Jeremiah O'Keefe. This is a David vs Goliath law case litigated in a small Mississippi courtroom; a true story made into a film based on a 1999 New Yorker article by Jonathan Harr about the Loewen-O'Keefe trial exposing the exploitation of poor and black people by a billionaire Corporation. 

This is a powerful film as evidenced in one scene of a group of people viewing a vast, flat expanse of green with no headstones - a  burial ground of slaves. This plot of land references the historical roots of racism and how time piles up one injustice over another so that the original  'sins" are buried so deep they are forgotten. 

 The two lead actors are both passionate fighters for what they believe in. Watching Jamie Foxx with incredible charisma as a small-time, hotshot personal injury lawyer stepping out of his comfort zone to defend a funeral home director who decides to sue a company that is attempting to decimate his family's legacy made me forget the world falling apart around us. 

Tommy Lee Jones also gives a terrific performance, using his body to express the feeling of defeat, shoulders slumped with a gait that is no longer straight but unsteady. THE BURIAL is filled with sentimentality which felt appropriate in the beauty of the relationship between Jones and Foxx - opposites but both respecting each other's values. 

I particularly want to mention a young actor, Mamoudou Athie, a quiet and commanding presence as Hal Dockins who O'Keefe hires just out of law school and is a catalyst for much of the film's legal maneuvering. 

WANGECHI MUTU AT NEW MUSEUM, NYC 6/2/23

 

I have attended almost all of Wangechi Mutu’s exhibitions in NYC over the years, and the effect on me, from the early pieces to the most recent bronze sculptures, has been profound. Her use of collage as an art form - one in which I once felt Hannah Hoch dominated - attained new levels of personal and political expression equal in range and breadth to exquisite and majestic paintings. These works at The New Museum closing June 6th, literally unearth the Kenyan soil - dry sand and deep red mud embodying the beauty and scourge of her homeland. Writhing cutout female figures containing imagery reminiscent of flayed animal flesh with a contagion crawling through the skin gives us a sense of what is “seen and unseen.” Mutu uses medical illustrations for one of her series of women’s faces describing death and disease - viruses brewing below the surface waiting to erupt.

Her potent satirical collages also speak to Western myths about Africa - women tattooed with leopard skin bodies and contorted faces romping around the landscape’s reeds and bark trees like insects collapsing into fetal positions - glitter and mylar bringing light and color unto their bowed bodies. There is always a stunning dream-like fascination with Mutu’s world of women which captivates and draws us to them - repulsion and seduction are compelling forces that bewitch and beguile.

Seeing this mini-retrospective at The New Museum helped me to better understand her large bronze sci-fi sculptures. They are a logical transformation from paper pulp and wood to molten metal. The surfaces are shiny with sleek ribbings. Women are conjoined with crocodilians and other imaginary creatures as if emerging out of cocoons - or seated atop them like noble blossoming royalty.

John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres - Exhibition SWAGGER AND TENDERNESS at Bronx Museum, NYC

The last time I took a bus traveling through the Bronx was in 2008 when I frequently visited Montefiore Hospital and shortly thereafter Calvary Hospital/Hospice where my mother lay dying receiving palliative care. I always chose the front seat on the bus so I could look out the driver’s translucent windows observing the teeming vibrancy of the neighborhoods we careened through. The ride back and forth became a bridge from vitality to death-a time of reflective memories and the finality of loss. At that time I noticed how some buildings were also collapsing, slowly fading away into the dusty ground while others were being renovated - rising up from decline.

I was on the way to The Bronx Museum to see the exhibition Swagger and Tenderness - The South Bronx Portraits featuring the artworks of John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres. This bus trip was different from 15 years ago. The Bronx where I grew up in my teen years having moved from Washington Heights was being “refurbished” - a double-edged sword grinding the buoyant culture of street games, locally owned stores/bodegas, and families sitting outside on stoops talking about the shared vicissitudes of their lives - both joyful and painful - which was slowly being eroded. But once I arrived at the Museum the world had tipped over again and I was drawn into the images of the inhabitants of this vital South Bronx community realizing that the breadth and breath of a neighborhood could not easily be extinguished.

I have been a fan of John Ahearn’s art since the early 1980s when I first glimpsed the four young girls on the side of a Bronx building playing “Double Dutch” jump rope. I was deeply touched by the profound affection, and “there-ness” displayed toward his subjects without resorting to any contrivances. I soon learned that John joined with Rigoberto Torres who had made plaster casts in his Uncle’s statuary store and that life-long partnership, each with distinctive stylistic and painterly touches is ongoing.

The Museum walls are painted a resonant blue - a bridging of sky and water; the sculptures float in that atmospheric space. Many works are collaborations - and I often wondered who did what? Separately I could often distinguish their stylistic differences, particularly in the acrylic painting on the casts. The “tenderness of the exhibition’s title is evident in almost every piece. The “swagger” is also visible, but the delicate beauty of John’s and Rigoberto’s brushwork with its range of skin tones and exuberant colors unearthed the humanity that exists below the veneer of bravado. I was uplifted by this generous exhibition allowing me entry into the gift of loving relationships be it with a parent, child, or friends.

https://bronxmuseum.org/exhibition/swagger-and-tenderness-the-south-bronx-portraits-by-john-ahearn-rigoberto-torres/

John Ahearn, BB, 1979, Acrylic on Plaster

John Ahearn with Rigoberto Torres, Maria, 1981, Acrylic on Plaster

John Ahearn, Cosmic, 1979, Acrylic on plaster

John Ahearn, Miguel, 2017, Acrylic on Plaster

Rigoberto Torres with John Ahearn, Teri, 1980, Acrylic on Plaster

John Ahearn with Rigoberto Torres, Mario and Norma, 1979, Acrylic on Plaster

Rigoberto Torres, Julio, Jose, and Junito, 1991/95, Acrylic on Plaster

John Ahearn, Pregnant Girl, 1979, Acrylic on Plaster

john Ahearn with Rigoberto Torres, Selena, 1985, Acrylic on Plaster

John Ahearn, Yashua Rd, 2021, Acrylic on Plaster

Rigoberto Torres, Keon and Jeanine, 1995, Acrylic on Plaster

NAN GOLDIN: ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED

 

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED documentary directed by Laura Poitras is on HBO and worth viewing. I felt nauseated viewing the despair and the tentacles of agony that Oxycontin wrested on those who were attempting to avoid pain and instead were engulfed by a "vampire" drug that devoured the essence of one's being eviscerating mind and body. 

We glimpse Nan Goldin from early childhood to the warrior activist she has become through the interweaving of deeply personal photos and slideshows of friends who became the family she yearned for. As a young girl Nan Goldin was terribly shy having lost to suicide her 18 years old sister - the one person in her biological family who she adored - the one who had the will to crash through the confines of suburban conformity.

Goldin speaks about her own Opioid addiction which she vividly describes as almost taking her life. Instead, it galvanized her to fight to make Purdue Pharma/Sackler Family pay for their greed and voracious propaganda through their promotion of Oxycontin, trafficking an epidemic of death into billions of dollars in corporate profits.

This is also a journey into the early East Village art and nightlife scenes and the devastation of so many young people to AIDS - another epidemic that was ignored for many years. Moving and heroic, I was enlightened and saddened by this film.

THE ENGLISH 11/18/22

I recommend seeing The English, a strangely surreal six-part Western series on Amazon and BBC, beautifully acted by Emily Blunt - the title’s English woman - who has come to this dry, expanse of land that is the American frontier in the 1890s where the rule of law is discarded, tossed into the air to fly among the vultures. There are many flashbacks whereby time and space are dislodged which can be disconcerting and often vertiginous. But these vignettes eventually coalesce - with deep poignancy and desolation.

Emily Blunt’s character,  Lady Cornelia Locke’s rarefied life in England is suddenly and violently assaulted propelling her to journey to the “new world” on a mission of revenge. There are many cameo roles with wonderful actors popping up throughout the series but Blunt commands our gaze and our heart. She appears to be a beautiful innocent toting a bagful of cash, but we discover early on that she has the ability and confidence to unleash carnage on her enemies.

Chaske Spencer, a Native American actor plays the other lead, Sgt. Eli Whipp, a Pawnee scout who recently left the US Army in Oklahoma and is traveling to Nebraska in order to legally “stake a land claim” in his ancestral home.  A harrowing incident brings Cornelia and Chaske together and they begin to travel alongside one another developing a relationship that delicately balances that tensile line between the cliched stoic silent hero and the damsel in distress. Their connection eventually becomes one of understanding and wonder in their very affinity. 

In the many subplots which expose the underlying cruelty, greed, and racism imposed by the myriad “old world” settler’s acquisition of the wild beauty and bleak dirt of the terrain, we glimpse the roots of America’s infirmity. Wresting power from the native tribes, retribution, hatred of the “other”, and a belief in extreme individualism were as rampant then as it is today. 

 Throughout the series, I was captivated by the startlingly original clipped dialogue which translated into the mystery of poetry. Words are often terse and stilted launching visual images. The silence of the sprawling landscape echoes the silence of communication. This is a love story with the knowledge that it is ill-fated and forever immutable.

PANDEMIC FATIGUE 8/14/22

 

Self-Portrait in Isolation, oil/alkyd/wood, 48x36in. 2020

The pandemic is not over. I am still isolating in my literal brick “temple,“ and yet the world outside is fatigued by the fear of getting ill, the fear of infecting others, or the ferment of callousness. My life, my appearance, and my trusted routines have been strikingly altered since March 2020.

In the early days before the word “pandemic” was ever mentioned, I attended gallery openings and the Armory show where I caught a very mild, asymptomatic  (at the time) case of what turned out to be Covid 19. One week later, in mid-March of 2020, I started to complain that food tasted very bland - and one night soon after, I read an article in the NY Times claiming that lack of taste and smell were  

symptoms of Covid. I frantically ran around the studio grabbing and opening up the most pungent of my art-making chemicals - turpentine, varnishes, etc. sniffing while inhaling deeply and not smelling anything. I got intensely anxious and since it was too late to call a Dr. I went to bed, had a very low fever, and ended up shivering violently throughout the night. The shakiness had as much to do with the dread and uncertainty of a virus that we all slowly began to realize was rapidly engulfing the planet.

When I called my Dr. and told him I had a temperature of 100.3 another symptom of this disease - he said do NOT go to the ER to be tested - stay home - Hospitals were too dangerous. Covid’s unknowns were like a shroud covering our usual havens of refuge and healing. Within a week I was feeling better - no respiratory symptoms, or tiredness so I mistakenly thought it was over.

Three months later I began to get what is now termed Long Haul symptoms. My full curly hair got very thin dismantling my narcissistic sense of self more — and to this day never grew back; not for lack of trying every new hair serum that I could search for online. My heart was skipping beats, my blood pressure was erratic and I would feel enervated at one moment and then slowly regain strength. I had spells of light-headedness and dizziness particularly after eating (post-prandial hypotension) and I lost about 18 lbs in two weeks. 

I filled up spray bottles with diluted bleach and water to protect my husband from Covid; we both did not go outside very much, except to my cardiologist who prescribed every possible cardiac test which all turned out to be “normal.” I did not go into NYC or see good friends and did not teach since the facility was closed.  One of my students bought me groceries every week - a kindness that I will never forget as I vigorously scrubbed down every item. Since I was never officially tested for Covid, I finally went 8 months later and had an antibody test and the results were positive and then had 2 more tests to make sure - all turned out positive for Covid-19 antibodies. It felt good to be vindicated from all those Doctors who lifted their eyebrows skeptically when  I mentioned “long haul” syndrome.

And then strangely in 2021, my husband got very ill from unknown causes with severe weakness, diarrhea, and eventually kidney failure (which was resolved) and was hospitalized 7 times in the past 2 years including one for a mild heart attack. I learned to deal with the medical establishment and one time it ended up with me yelling, gesticulating - hands flying around my face -  at one particular Doctor while a group of astonished nurses surrounded us in the dull green hallway as if we were in the midst of a boxing ring. One good thing came out of the hospitalizations -  I am no longer afraid of going to the Emergency Room or calling 9-11.

This year was my turn to be sick and I am still recuperating from an aberrant bout with early onset sepsis and then a month of an antibiotic-induced malady.  There have been other medical scares but I finally feel that my life as lived -which seems so long ago - might be viable and the experience of looking at art and going to galleries - a profound imperative filling up the gash of emptiness of my being is a real possibility. 

By the way, throughout these months I have always painted; the process being my deliverance from deep despair.

SOUTHLAND ON HBO MAX - 7/19/22

For the past two weeks, I have been watching all five seasons of SOUTHLAND - a series that ran from 2009-2013; a psychologically incisive cop show on HBO, focusing on policing in a run-down gang-infested area of Los Angeles. We are shown the raw, often brutish nature of being an officer and the magnitude of quick-fire decisions that are made by men and women in uniform fraught with crushing apprehension that can result in taking a life or losing your own. Racism, hate, and negligence in moments of crisis are critically exposed revealing who you really are. Know thyself is tested when you confront life’s desperate moments.

 This show does not romanticize law enforcement but is a fairly realistic portrayal of the humanity or lack of in the daily tensions and dangerous interactions the police have with the populace - those who they are sworn to "protect" and how each character is altered by on-the-street experiences deeply affecting their internal values.  We are privy to the "boots" (new recruits) starting out with an innocent idealism that slowly becomes ossified and eroded by fear, enmity,S and occasionally the beauty of an embrace of tenderness. 

The acting is superb with Regina King as one of the Detectives who ambivalently grapples with motherhood. She is excellent as Lydia Adams - the most empathetic person in SOUTHLAND with a fierce desire to shelter victims of heinous crimes, particularly women and children. Another performance is by Michael Cudlitz as Officer John Cooper - a stoic, gay - not “out” to his comrades but “in” and accepting of himself - a proud man who has been on the force for over 20 years and is highly respected by his peers. His training of the younger up-and-coming recruits slowly unmasks his wrenching inner struggles and his decency. Officer John Cooper rarely smiles, but his expressive face affirms a devotion to his profession as well as the cynicism that accompanies it and cannot be escaped. Another one of my favorite actors was Shawn Hatosy who plays Officer Sammy Bryant - a hot-tempered, yet shy and awkward cop - one who uses his physicality to excess - but his delicacy and fragility are palpable. 

There are some serious omissions to SOUTHLAND - we do not get any insight into the victims’ and perpetrators’ lives as we move on to the next episode. This is a series that unapologetically spotlights the Hollywood police department in Southland - a nickname for the greater Los Angeles area. I definitely recommend it so we too can condemn and praise those who devote their lives and collect pensions to “protect” we the people.