Archive for September, 2009

The Milkmaid

       Noone knows exactly who she was now.  A woman ensconced in domesticity, pouring milk — the scene may have  seemed mundane.  But the Dutch  painter Johannes Vermeer saw something majestic and sensual — even monumental in the moment.  The colors seem translucent.  The level of detail makes it seem almost photographic, although it was likely painted sometime during the year  1657- 58.  The painting possesses a moving luminosity.  Currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Nov. 28,  ”The Milkmaid”  is considered the painter’s masterpiece.  She was sent over this year — along with other paintings by Vermeer and his contemporaries as a gift from the Netherlands to pay homage to the 400th anniversary of explorer Henry Hudson’s visit to the island, we now know as Manhattan.
       To see more of the Dutch influence, check out the exhibit at the South Street Seaport,  “New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World.”  And through June, 2010, The Holland on the Hudson festival will celebrate the 400th anniversary with events and exhibitions.

     The anguish and ecstasy of romantic love are embodied by  “In-I”, a theatre-dance piece currently on view at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
     French actress Juliette Binoche and British choreographer Akram Khan create a searing portrait of two lovers struggling with sexual and emotional intimacy.
      ”La Binoche,” as she is often referred to in the French press is all over New York this month and next.  A collection of her paintings is at the French Consulate.   And there is a book, “Portraits in-Eyes,”  which has poems and pictures based on characters she’s played and directors she  has worked with.   Her new film, “Paris,” opened this Friday.     

  Finding Magic

        Binoche, who has had a spectacular career, working with directors as varied as Kieslowski, Godard,  never thought about being a dancer. But at age 43, after answering her masseuse’s question: Do you Want to Dance? — she embarked on this project.
      But stretching boundaries is what she is all about.
      In an interview with writer  Faith Salie for  Double X,  she said she tries to stay away from labels. “I  try not to call myself [anything], because otherwise you get stuck into ideas.  Getting into other fields, worlds—it gives me certain freedom, and at the same time it shows me my limits, my pain.
       ”We have a tendency because of fear or of a lack of imagination to be out of tune with the truthful, magical side [of our bodies,” she told Salie.  And I have to say that if I didn’t get through that experience, I wouldn’t have discovered my energy—what the Chinese people call qi, you know the tai chi, the qi gong. I would say it is a sign of what the body has, which is the energy that you can’t see but you can feel.”
Finding Dreams
       Fearless  would be one word that would describe her.
       She posed naked for Playboy at the age of 43 and  while she doesn’t think she will keep dancing, she told Double X, she hs been transformed by having had the experience.  ” Dancing taught me to go for my dreams. And not to judge my dreams from outside, just to do it.”
    “In-I” will run through Sept. 26 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and is paired with a retrospective of her films at BAMCinematek: “Rendez-Vous With Juliette Binoche” through Sept. 30. Her paintings will be on display at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy at 972 5th Avenue through Oct. 9.

September 1, 1939
By W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame

     Summer Days.  Long, languid, when it seems any thing can happen — when La Vie Boheme and Adventure beckon.  Shakespeare knew what the End of Summer can do to a person’s psyche.   That, along with the  Slings and Arrows of Time — could really get a person down.
      So,  with Labor Day upon us, get thee quickly to some  Summer Fun. Along with the obvious choices — Beach! Blanket! Bingo! — why not head for Lincoln Center, where the The Metropolitan Opera is offering La Boheme,  Orfeo and Euridice and  Il Trittico  on the Big Screen — in HD, so it feels like you’re watching a life performance — and they’re all free. 
     The Piece de Resistance will be on Monday night, when Madama Butterfly, directed by the incomparable, late Anthony Minghella will be shown.
       With the stars out — and the full moon shining, what could be a sweeter way to say Goodbye to Summer..
      SONNET XVIII
“SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY?”