BERNSTEIN;S Peter Pan at Bard's 2018 SummerScape: Review By Polly Guerin

The dreamlike abandoned Amusement Park Set

Bard SummerScape, the celebrated art festival at Annandale-on-Hudson lures sophisticates out of the Big Apple to attend the season's most innovative (and at times most unusual) cultural experiences. Such is the case with Bard's innovative production of Peter Pan with a new agenda and re-imagined cast. All photos herewith by Maria Baranova.
      To honor the Leonard Bernstein's centennial, 2018 Bard SummerScape is celebrating with a provocative production of Bernstein;s score for Peter Pan and a production set in a dreamlike abandoned amusement park including a working 1950's carnival ride on stage. Obviously, this isn't the 1954 Broadway Musical I am talking about, but an adaption of J.M. Barrie's play that debuted in the 1950s and ran for 321 performances and has rarely been revived since. Bernstein wrote the lyrics of the nine songs, as well as the music.

Comedian/actor Peter Smith as Peter Pan

CHRISTOPHER ALLEN  
Bernstein specialist Christopher Allen's adaptation presents an intimate contemporary production for modern audiences. Taking his cue from Peter Pan's desire for eternal childhood, Alden situates the story in a dreamy environment reminiscent of an abandoned fair ground. His treatment features a young, diverse cast, a dreamlike concept, and a humorous off-kilter energy that combine to propel the period classic into the 21st century. Kudos go to Bard for bringing this new production to the stage. It is the only one of Bernstein's theatrical works staged in the New York area during the centennial year. Allen's psychological gripping treatment reveals an "on trend" take of the story. The result is an innocent children's tale turned into something darker with up-to-date action and vivid characters.
     It all makes sense. Peter Smith as Peter and Erin Markey as Wendy represent a growing community of young trans and nonbinary performers who are gaining increased visibility in the mainstream.   
SUMMERSCAPE PRODUCTION
The Summerstage production features new choreography by Jack Ferver who also portrays Tinker Bell whilst holding a disco ball throughout. By turns whimsical and sinister, it is transfigured with Leonard Bernstein's shimmering score. The production's cast is led by "America's Baritone" (Broadway World) William Michals as Captain Hook who sonorous voice is breathtaking. Then, too, the energetic Peter Smith "cabaret powerhouse comedian/entertainer" takes center stage as Peter scaling the heights aboard the carousel and interacting with mesmerizing Erin Markey, another trans star of the New York performance scene,. 

Accolades go to Marsha Ginsberg's vivid sets, striking lighting and costume and lighting design by Terese Wadden and Jax Messenger.
           For Bard's take on Peter Pan Garth Edwin Sunderland re-scored Bernstein's music for a band of musicians. Fully integrated with the action kudos go to the excellent playing by a young instrumental sextet on stage.
      The new production premieres with 25 performances in the LUMA Theater of the Frank Gehry designed Richard B. Fisher Center of the Performing Arts on Bard's Judson Valley campus until July 22.
JUST THE FACTS 
Originally an Edwardian play by Scottish dramatist J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up owes is an enduring children's classic and owes its long status to two popular American adaptations, both of which date from the 1950s. Three of the songs"Who I Am?", "Build My House", and "Dream With Me" have been incorporated into the American songbook.
For tickets contact Fisher Center Box Office at 845-758-7900 or visit: 
www.fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape. 
    Ta Ta Darlings!!!  Get out of town and day trip up to BARD for an unforgettable journey with Bernstein's Peter Pan.  Fan mail welcome at pollytalknyc@gmail.com.  Visit Polly's Bllogs
on www.pollytalk.coim.
       

OBSESSION: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele and Picasso at The Met Breuer: Review By Polly Guerin

The Met Breuer turns up the summer heat with a brilliant group of erotic and evocative watercolors, drawings, and prints by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Pablo Picasso whose subjects, except for a handful are nudes.  
OBSESSION: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele and Picasso from The Metropolitan Museum of
Art's Scofield Thayer Collection presents some fifty works in an exhibition opening Tuesday,
July 3 through October 7, 2018.  The exhibition is the first time these works are shown together and will provide a focused look at this important collection, it also marks the centenary of the deaths of Klimt who died at 55 of a struck and and Schiele who died at 28 during the Spanish flu epidemic. Image: Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918). Standing nude with orange drapery, 1914. Watercolor gouache, graphite on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of
Scofield Thayer, 1982.

 INTRODUCING AMERICA to MODERNISM   An aesthete and scion of a wealthy family, Scofield Thayer (1889-1982) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. His family fortune accumulated in the textile business Scofield afforded Scofield opportunity to enlarge his passion for modernism He was co-publisher and editor of the literary magazine the DIAL and from 1920 to 1929 was an influential outlet for modernist literature in English. 
       The avant-garde journal introduced Americans to the writing of Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Arthur Schnitzer, Thomas Mann, E. E. Cummings, and Marc Proust, among others. The first publication of T. S. Elliot's "The Waste Land," appeared in the Dial and the poetry prize that accompanied it had enormous influence at the time. The roster of contributors represented the who's who of the most celebrated poets and writers of the era. 
       Then too, let's not forget the poet, Marianne Moore's affiliation with the DIAL The prolific Greenwich Village poet served as editor of the DIAL along with other luminaries in the literary and art world.
       Scofield often accompanied these writer's contributions with reproductions of modern art never seen in America..  Throughout his life he was a passionate friend of Picasso.
      Thayer assembled his large collection of some 600 works---mostly works on paper in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna Ebetween 1921 ad 1923. 
SCOFIELD THAYER While he was a patient of Sigmund Freud in Vienna, he acquired a large group of watercolors and drawings by Schiele and Klimt who at that time were unknown in America. When a selection from his collection was shown at the Montross Gallery in New York in 1924, five years before the Museum of Modern Art opened, it won acclaim.      

However, it found no favor in Thayer's native city, Worcester, Massachusetts, that same year when it was shown a the Worcester Art Museum.
     Incensed, Thayer drew up his will in 1925, leaving his collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. With ongoing illness and  psychological difficulties his mental condition became worse.  He withdrew from life in the late 1920s ad lived as a recluse on Martha's Vineyard and Florida until his death in 1921.
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by The Met.
An essay by James Dempsey, instructor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an authority on Scofield Thayer discusses the collector's professional and private life. Sabine Rewald discusses
in depth the works of the three artists and also examines Thayer's purchases between l921 and 1023, as documented in invoices.The exhibition is featured on the Museum's website, as well as on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using hashtag #MetObsession.
     Ta Ta Darlings!!! This is a steamy exhibition, most nudes. Visitors are advised that some images at this exhibitio contain explicit erotic content. Fan mail welcome, please contact
pollytalknyc@gmail.com. Visit Polly's Blogs on www.pollytalk.com and click on the Blog in the left column that resonates with your interest.

          

GIACOMETTI: at Guggenheim: Review By Polly Guerin

The Giacometti Exhibition within the Museum's Rotunda 

Although most of us remember Giacometti, as the preeminent modernist sculptor renowned for creating distinctive figurative sculptures the exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum examines anew the artist's expansive oeuvre. Encompassing the entirety of the artist's career, GIACOMETTI opens up a rare opportunity to see decades of his works installed within the museums rotunda. Through September 12, 2018.
       Featuring nearly 200 sculptures, paintings, an drawing, this is the first major museum exhibition in the United States in more that 15 years dedicated to the Swiss-born artist. some of which have never before seen in the United States as well as archival photographs and ephemera. 

Alberto Giacometti in his Paris studio, 1958

THE FIGURATIVE SCULPTURES Renowned for the distinctive figurative sculptures that he produced in reaction to the trauma and anguish of World War II, includes a series of elongated standing women, striding men, and expressive bust-length figures.  Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) investigateted the human figure for more than forty years. He moved to Paris in 1922 and eventually settled in a 15-by-16-foot studio in the artists' quarter of Montparnasse. Image: Alberto Giacometti in his Paris studio, 1958. Photo Ernst Scheidegger. (c) 2018 Stiftung Ernst Scheidegger-Archiv-Zurich.
He produced the greater part of his work in this tiny space, which he maintained until the end of his life. Giacometti's brother Diego, also an artist , became his assistant, he and Annette Arm, whom Giacometti wed in 1949, were the artist's most frequently rendered models. It is interesting to note that the new Giacometti Institute will soon open in the historic Montparnasse district where the artist lived and worked.
RETROSPECTIVE Visitors will have the opportunity to view works from across Giacometti's career. Examples of his early production reveal his engagement with Cubism and Surrealism as well as African, Oceanic, Cycladic art, and reflect interaction with writers including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.  

The Nose (Le nez) 1949

The selection of paintings and drawings on view demonstrates his attempt to capture the essence of humanity which identifies with his incessant sculptural investigation of the human body. Rich historical photographs and ephemera, such as journals ad sketchbooks containing drawings, also provide insights into Giacometti's process and artistic development. Image: The Nose, (Le nez) 1949 (cast 1964) Bronze, wire, rope and steel. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 66.1807 (c) Alberto Giacometti Estate/Licensed by VAGA and ARS, New York. Photo: Kristopher McKay (c) The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
      Education and Public Programs with details are posted at
guggenheim.org/calendar.  Including: REFLECTIONS ON GIACOMETTI, Tuesday, July 31 at 6:30 pm. Film Screenings take place in the New Media Theater, Level B and are free with museum admission including Alberto Giacometti (1966), dir. Ernst Scheidegger and Peter Munger, 28 min on Friday September 7 at 3 pm, 3:30 pm and 4 pm. For more information visit: guggenheim.org/films.
      Ta Ta Darlings!! Giacometti's oeuvre transcends the stick figures and emerges at the Guggenheim shedding new light on the artist's notable works in paintings and sculptures of another kind.  Fan mail welcome at pollytalknyc@gmail.com.  Visit Polly's other Blogs at
www.pollytalk.com. Just click in the left hand column to links on visionary men, women determined to succeed, fashion and even poetry.

SUMMER OF MAGIC at New-York Historical Society: Review By Polly Guerin

An enchanting adventure into the magical world of illusion and mesmerizing feats of dare devil fate invites children and adults with childlike wonder and awe to an unforgettable SUMMER OF MAGIC at the New York Historical Society on display through September 16, 2018.
      With an exciting, museum-wide line-up of mesmerizing displays, evening programs, family
activities, and free films the exhibit offers a historical spectacle of magic and the magicians, like the legendary Houdini, who became famous performing death-defying feats. 
      You may not be an aficionado of the magic genre but at his exhibit you will surely respond to the opportunity to discover the tricks, illusions and escapes that mystified audiences in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then, too, the historical reenactors portraying the great illusionists of the past will invite you to try your hand at magic tricks, learn about mind reading, women in magic, tragic performances, unsolved mysteries, and more.
DAVID COPPERFIELD.
       The exhibition features highlights from the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts and the unrivaled treasure trove of magical historical artifacts from Emmy Award-winning illusionist David Copperfield's private collection. Image: middle-Harry Houdini's Milk Can, ca. 1908. Copperfield Collection. Photo Glenn Castellano. 
     Displays showcase iconic objects used by Harry Houdini in his famous escape stunts,
culminating with the spectacular installation of the DEATH SAW, one of Copperfield's ground-

Harry Houdini Artifacts

breaking illusions.
     Recalling his childhood experiences Copperfield related how his family endorsed, his passion for magic. "Every week my mother took me to Macy's," Copperfield told an enthralled audience. A re-creation of a magic shop includes archival information on how Copperfield learned magic tricks at MACY'S MAGIC COUNTER,  where magic demonstrator, DannyTsukalis (1965) 
mesmerized the young Copperfield, who learned magic there.  David was already an accomplished conjurer by the age of twelve, and at sixteen, he was an adjunct professor at New York University, where he taught a course called 'the Art of Magic."  Copperfield is an artist with numerous accolades in the fields of television, Broadway shows, literature and in popular culture. He is the first illusionist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Handcuffs used by Harry Houdini

FAMILY PROGRAMS
     Family fun takes on Saturdays and Sundays during the Summer of Magic when the magical past comes to life with historical magicians, fortune tellers, escape artists and other marvelous illusionists from the past---all portrayed by Living Historians from the present. Image: Handcuffs used by Harry Houdini for the Daily Mirror challenge, 1904. Photo Homer Liwag. 
For in depth information about Summer of Magic and its related programs, visit the museum's website:
http://www.history.org/summer-magic. Would be magicians and illusionists will have a wide scope of subject matter to attract their attention, such as the Magic Workshop, Tuesday, August 7 at 7pm with Jeremy the Magician, when everyone will learn more astonishing magic to wow their friends. No prior magic experience is necessary. Then, too, there's Parlor Mind Reading, Tragic Magic, The Escape Game to name a few. SUMMER OF MAGIC Free films on pay-as-you-wish Friday evenings---free film screening's including Houdini, Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, and War of the Worlds, and more.
Ta Ta Darlings!!! I can't wait to attend Women in the Golden Age of Magic, when magician Margaret Steele tells tales about the first glamorous female illusion partners.  Fan mail always welcome pollytalknyc@gmail.com. Visit Polly's website at www.pollytalk.com to click on links
to other Blogs on women determined to succeed, visionary men, fashion or poetry.
     

       

VANISHED!!! Old New York's Past By Polly Guerin

Landmarks in peril sound the alarm
Old New York is losing its charm

Neighborhood treasures disappear
Demotion inevitable, this I fear

The Sunshine Cinema closed for good
Petitioners wondered not understood

The walls of sacred places on the log  
And the 168-year old Hagadol Synagogue

Structures keep vanishing each year
Losing our color past is very clear

The wrecking ball struck a 173-old
Building on East Houston Street

The old city is quickly swept away
All that was wonderful in its day

Stamping out the varied landscape
For rising glass places in the sky

Why, Why Why do let us rally and protest
Save the varied urban landscape at its best.

All that makes New York City unique
The wrecking ball continues to deplete.

Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders at the Morgan: Review by Polly Guerin

Artists in the Middle Ages were ahead of their time with marvels of imagination. They filled the world around them with dragons, unicorns, and other fabled beasts to inventive hybrid creatures that captivated the imagination of medieval men and women, just as they continue to fascinate us today.                                                     Image: The Taming the Tarasque, from Hours of Henry VIII, France, Tours, ca.1500. The Morgan Library and Museum, MS H.8 fol Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2013.                                                          Drawing on the Morgan Library and Museum's superb collection of illuminated manuscripts, this major exhibition MEDIEVAL MONSTERS; TERRORS, ALIENS, WONDERS, the first of its kind in North America, is on view through September 22, 2018. It explores the complex social role of monsters in the Middle Ages and brings together approximately seventy works spanning the ninth and sixteenth century ranging from illuminated manuscripts and tapestry to metalworks and ivory.                                                                               Medieval Monsters leads visitors through three sections based on the ways monsters functioned in medieval societies. "Terrors" explores how monsters enhanced the aura of those in power, be they rulers, knights, or saints. Throughout the Middle Ages, rulers capitalized on the mystique of monsters to enhance their own aura of power. By embellishing all manner of luxury objects with monstrous imagery, the nobility and clergy could also reinforce and dramatize their own authority.                                                                         In the modern world, the term alien is most strongly associated with extraterrestrials but in the Middle Ages, however, aliens were very much inhabitants of our world. The second section on "Aliens" demonstrates how marginalized groups in European societies—such as Jews, Muslims, women, the poor, and the disabled—were further alienated by being depicted as monstrous. Women, the poor, the mentally ill or physically impaired could all be made monstrous by medieval artists.  

The final section, "Wonders", considers a group of strange beauties and frightful anomalies that populated the medieval world. Whether employed in ornamental, entertaining, or contemplative settings, these fantastic beings were meant to inspire a sense of marvel and awe in their viewers.                                                    Image: Siren, from Abus du Monde (The Abuses of the World) France, Rouen, ca.1510. The Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.42, fol.15r. Photography by James Chiu, 2017.                                  "In the medieval world the idea of the monstrous permeated every level of society," said Colin B. Bailey, director of the Morgan Library and Museum, "from rulers, and the nobility and the clergy, to agrarian and urban dwellers alike.  Artists of the Middle Ages captured this phenomenon in images of beings at once familiar and foreign to today's viewer."
        Exhibition related firms, free with museum admission include King Kong vs Godzilla, July 13, 7 pm, Pans Labyrinth, July 27, 7 pm. Gallery Talks
include June 29 and July 20, l pm. A family program, Monstrous Masterpiece takes place Saturday June 16 11 am-1pm. Participants will join New York City-based artist Max Greis to create monstrous creatures with beastly painted paper and their favorite real and make-believe elements.
Ta Ta Darlings!!! Enough, enough, need I say more, this is a fascinating exhibit that may strike terror in your heart or amuse by the mere monstrosity of the images.
Fan mail welcome at pollytalknyc@gmail.com.  I invite you to visit Polly's Blogs at www.pollytalk.com Click on the link in the left-hand column to the Blog that resonates with your interest on fashion, determined women, visionary men or poetry.
                                

The MAGIC OF HANDWRITING at the Morgan: Review by Polly Guerin

Peering into the intimate lives of the great artists, poets and historical figures is the focus of the new exhibition THE MAGIC OF HANDWRITING, but this exhibit is not about handwriting itself. It is about the "magic" that one finds in handwritten correspondence that intimately connects us back to the everyday life with the people who marked the page.
      Left: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). The concluding portion of an autograph, letter signed to his father, Leopold Mozart, (Mannheim) 7 February 1778 in which the-two-year-old composer ventures to make his own decisions regarding his musical career rather than following his father's strict instructions.   Collection of Pedro Correa do Lago. 

      Culled from Brazilian author, the Pedro do Lago's collection, 140 items are on display with letters and manuscripts in the hands of such other luminaries as Vincent van Gogh, Emily Dickinson, Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust and Jorge Luis Borges and others.  Musical compositions and inscribed photographs and documents included, some never been publicly are mesmerizing insights into private lives of historical figures.

THE YOUNG COLLECTOR At the age of eleven, Pedro Correa do Lago began writing to individuals he admired. The English novelist, R.R.R Tolkien, Lord of the Rings fame, may have declined to send him anything, but scores of others did. Mr. Correo do Lago shares the passion of the Morgan's founder, John Pierpont Morgan, for collecting letters and manuscripts that bear the handwriting of some of the most influential figures in Western history and culture. 

        "From the time I was very young I have derived enormous pleasure from collecting autographs, which serve as tangible link that defy the passage of time," said Mr. Correa do Lago. "I am thrilled to be able to share of the manuscripts and letters that have brought me such joy and to do so within the library of one of the greatest American autograph collectors."
HISTORY:  Early letters document the personal and political relationships of Western Europe's monarchs and scions. Twentieth-century historical letter bring to life moments and relationships of great drama. In 1917, Dutch-born dancer known as Mata Hari writes a desperate plea from prison after being arrest on charges of espionage in 1947.  Tender moments inscribed in letters share the intimacy of love. At the age of eighty, his handwriting shaky after a recent stroke, Winston Churchill sends a letter to Pamela, Lady Lytton, his first

great love saying, "I am getting older now the trappings of power and responsibility have fallen away, and I totter along in the shades of retirement.ART: The items on view span more than four centuries and include examples of the handwriting of some of the leading artists in modern Western history including Benvenuto Cellini, J M W Turner, Monet, Henri Matisse and Frida Kahlo. The earliest work on view in this section is a small, hitherto unpublished block drawing with notes by Michelangelo, dated ca 1518. More than four hundred years later, in 1949, Henri Matisse wrote a note to his friend Albert Skira, the Swiss art publisher, filling more than half the page with a crayon sketch, thus turning
a personal letter into an intimate work of art.
       Image: Henri Matisse (1860-1954). Autograph note signed with initials, to Albert Skira 16 February, 1949. Collection of Pedro Correa do Lago (c) 2018 Succession
H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
MUSIC and PERFORMING ARTS; On view is an extremely messy
draft page for The Girl of the Golden West (La Fanculla del West), which reveals the energy and frenzy in which Giacomo Puccini composed. Then, too, there are examples of the handwriting of Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig von Beethoven to a signed sketch of the dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky by Jean Cocteau.  

Finally inscribed photographs of some of the greatest entertainers of the twentieth-century include entertainers Billie Holiday, the Marx Brothers, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and even the Beatles. Their handwriting and signatures serve as reminders of their unique personalities. 
       Image: Signed photograph of Josephine Baker (1905-1975) inscribed to Mille Le"Dunf," Paris, 1930; Photograph by R. Sobol. Collection of Pedro Correa do Lago.
LITERATURE Extraordinary personal communications in the show include one of only tow know surviving letters from Oscar Wilde, author of Dorian Gray to Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and extremely complimentary letter from Gustave Flaubert to Victor Hugo, and a charming letter from twelve-year-old Ernest Hemingway asking his father if they might go see the Chicago Cubs play that weekend (it will be a dandy game"). 
Emily Dickinson writes "To be remembered is next to being loved, and to be loved is Heaven, and is this quite Earth? I have never found it so." HER LETTER IS A REMINDER THAT HANDWRITTEN LETTERS PROVIDE A POWERFUL MEANS OF REMEMBRANCE OF THOSE LIVING AND DEAD.
       Ta Ta Darlings!!!   If you love history as I do, scanning the private writings of the world's most famous people, is worthy of a visit to the Morgan.  I adore receiving fan mail, please respond to  pollytalknyc@gmail.com and visit Polly's other Blogs on www.pollytalk.com.