In “Women of Will,” the actor and director Tina Packer casts an entertaining and informative light on how Shakespeare’s female characters navigate the unequal society into which they are born. In her New York debut, the British-born artist explores and dissects the Bard’s genius as it applies to gender inequality over an epic five-part narrative, ranging from Kate in “Taming of the Shrew” to Rosalind in “As You Like It” to Desdemona in “Othello.” An overview of the entire cycle, now on at the Gym at Judson downtown, will eventually yield to the individual parts — i.e. Part One: “Warrior Women” — and marathon performances through June. Packer, along with co-star Nigel Gore, performs excerpts from the canon, pausing from time to time to offer brief scholarly insights about the scenes. ARTINFO’s Patrick Pacheco spoke with Packer recently to discuss the less-than-maternal instincts of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s puckish use of male disguise, and just what the Bard might have made of the scandal involving Manti Te’o, the University of Notre Dame football player who was the victim of a bizarre Internet hoax. Hint: “He would have loved it!”

In the excerpt on “Macbeth,” you intimate that Lady Macbeth had recently had a child. What happened to it?

I don’t know. We know the Macbeths do not have children. But she also asks the spirits to “take my milk for gall” and she also says that she knows what it is like to have “given suck” and even though she knows that tenderness, she would still, while her babe was smiling,  “have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash’d the brains out.” It’s extraordinary really. Dashing its brains out? But she’s working on Macbeth to kill Duncan. He’ll be a man if he does it and won’t be one if he doesn’t.

She actually asks those “murdering ministers” to  “unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty.” Do you think this was an early case of what Freud calls “penis envy”?

[Laughs] Well I think that might be the nearest that Shakespeare ever comes to that. And maybe this is just where Freud, who read a great deal of Shakespeare, got this psychological syndrome. In that speech, it’s almost like she’s planning to do the murder herself. But she knows nothing about killing and she unleashes this horror in him and then she can’t stop it. It absolutely destroys her. And far from making their marriage stronger and closer, it goes to the dogs.

Do you think if she actually had a child, that might have mitigated her blood lust?

I think it’s more that Duncan decides to stay at the castle that makes her want to take advantage of the opportunity. I might think that any woman who has children… but then again you hear about soccer moms and some of the extremes they go to when their child is in competition. As an actor, you just have to gather all these pieces of information and then, using your imagination, create back story. It’s always a question of what images resonate with me and finding out what motivates them.

You point out that when women tell the truth, it ends in tragedy. When they tell it disguised as men, all ends happily.  Why?

I believe that Shakespeare saw how deeply unfair society was to women and he increasingly wanted to reveal that. I don’t know if he played women’s parts as an actor, but he really got it. Even Queen Elizabeth — and he would have known the queen because of performing at court a lot — she had to maneuver the men all the time to make them do what she wanted them to do. She said in a speech, “I might be a meek and humble woman but I have the blood of my father in me.” She evoked a rather nasty father who killed her mother and stepmother! That’s why Kate in “Taming of the Shrew” is such an angry woman and she has quite a right to be.

How radical was that to an Elizabethan audience?

Deeply radical. After Shakespeare, John Fletcher, the next prominent playwright, would carry on the tradition of asserting women’s rights.  He would write a play about Petruchio — Kate having died because of his ill behavior towards her — and his new wife would tame him.

What do you think Shakespeare would have made of the Manti Te’o situation? A young man invents a female persona on the Internet in order “to woo” a Notre Dame linebacker and he’s taken in by it?

Oh, he would have loved it! First of all this idea of having a fantasy figure, a muse, is very powerful, especially among men. Look at Dante who saw Beatrice only once, when he was 9 and she was 7 and then only for a few minutes. Shakespeare had the Dark Lady of the Sonnets but he also didn’t close himself off from the aliveness of male friendship and male love. His male characters have real passion for each other. Sexuality is very powerful in Shakespeare. And it doesn’t matter if its between men and women or men and men. The Count Orsino is ostensibly in love with Olivia but then this young “boy” starts to serve him and something real is happening between them.  What’s important is the love and not who is loving who.

Do you think Shakespeare would have treated the young man who created the ruse, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, with sympathy? 

I think he would have appreciated the young man’s imagination and whatever triggered him to make up this fantastic story. And that it would then trigger everybody else’s imagination? I don’t think he would think that it was odd at all; he would find it all quite natural.  He would have been delighted with the imaginative sweep of it all. 

MONTREAL — The re-discovery of Manchu Picchu in 1911 did more than just expose the ruins of this ancient royal estate, floating, seemingly, on a lonely, cloudy mountain peak. It simultaneously created a national symbol that is today associated the world over with both Peru and the splendor of Andean indigenous civilizations.

No surprise then that the sumptuous, broad-ranging exhibition “Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon,” organized by and on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, starts with a panoramic picture of the great Inca ruins. Hiram Bingham took this picture, around 1911, when he and his team of Yale archaeologists stumbled across the site. He followed up the visit with excavations between 1912 and 1915, quietly hauling off much treasure.

Bingham’s vintage print is just one of over 370 objects in this exhibition on loan from 50 or so collections in Peru, and elsewhere. It is a big, beautiful show, wildly expansive in vision, detailed in investigation (witness the 384-page catalog with gold trimmed pages), a Wunderkammer of artifacts, vintage photographs, religious iconography, gold and silver ornaments, textiles, and, to cap it off, a solid display of colonial era paintings, including several rare, perfectly lovely representations of angels. 

Fortunately, museum visitors with an interest in ancient civilizations won’t have to go to Montreal to see this show, which will be touring to Seattle this October and hopefully to other United States venues in the following year. There is even some hope that it will tour back to Peru, specifically a space in Lima. But there are some advantages to seeing it here, chiefly the generous, inviting installation which allows objects to breathe yet at the same time connects them in a way that tells a compelling, integrated story.

In the end, that is what you want in a museum show, right, or at least I do: to tell me a good story. The story is not too difficult to follow: the show traces the evolution of Peruvian cultural identity over the past 3,000 years. Does it lack focus, a little, does it jump about in time and in medium, absolutely, but I can forgive all of these things because the narrative is so compelling. Then there’s that other crucial element.

Outstanding objects are also what you want in a museum show besides a compelling story. Luckily there are dozens of them here, such as a Mochica forehead ornament with feline head and octopus tentacles ending in tiny catfish heads made of gold and shells, on loan from the Museo de la Nacion in Lima. Repatriated in 2006, it is being exhibited here for the first time since its return to Peru. It is spectacular, of course, gleaming under bright spotlights. Seeing this piece alone is probably worth the price of admission.

Further highlights include important objects in gold, silver and turquoise from the Royal Tombs of Sipan, unearthed in 1987 and considered to be the most significant archaeological find in Peru since the rediscovery of Machu Picchu: I can remember reading about these excavations in the pages of National Geographic. One terrific piece to look out for is the gold and turquoise ear disc depicting a warrior.

Most of the great archaeological objects are in the first few rooms, which are devoted in part to illustrating ways in which archaeology helped rewrite the national history, beginning with the discovery of Machu Picchu. In addition to the great Inca Empire, Peru was home to many, earlier, equally splendid civilizations such as the Mochica, Lambayeque and Chimu to the north and the Paracas and Nazca to the south.

Beyond outstanding individual objects, one of the things I really like about this show is the attention paid to representations of myths, rituals and symbols, in particular  to the way they are recycled and transformed through history. The “Black Christ,” a staple of colonial religious iconography, is for instance a hybrid of Catholic imagery of the Crucifixion of Christ and the “Lord of Earthquakes,” an Andean animistic deity.

Not everyone will be admiring of the modern pictures here, though, for Peruvians like the exhibition curator, Victor Pimentel, Curator of Pre-Columbian Art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, they elicit a tremendous pride. For him they represent a “revalorization” of once maligned indigenous symbols in service of a new, shared national identity. A culture looking back, while looking forward, is the message that shines brightly through this marvelously enlightening show.

“Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon” is at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, through  June 16th.

To see works from the exhibition, click on the slideshow.

Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons would no doubt enjoy a concert by pianist Fred Hersch. On March 2, when the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University presents the New York City premiere of “My Coma Dreams” — Hersch’s extraordinary music and theater piece based on his experience of surviving a two-month medically induced coma — something more than cultural enrichment will occur. Hersch’s performance should serve as an offering of both gratitude and instruction to those who saved him.

By 2008, Fred Hersch was at the top rank of jazz pianists by anyone’s estimation: his gigs, solo and in a variety of contexts, were required listening in New York, and his influence on a generation of players clear. His surprising career resurgence after he emerged from that coma in 2008, the result of pneumonia run rampant, has been a wondrous. Just a month out of a rehabilitation clinic, in October 2008, he was playing piano, however tentatively, at Smalls in Greenwich Village. By January 2009, he led a quintet with confidence at the Village Vanguard. His recent recordings — including last year’s wonderful trio date “Alive at the Vanguard” — suggest something beyond recovery; he sounds agile as ever, and somehow freer.

“People tell me that my playing is somehow deeper now since my recovery,” he said during an interview for a 2010 Wall Street Journal profile. “I can’t judge whether that’s true or not. But I’ve always been determined to be my own man at the piano. And now, I feel even more of a desire to just be Fred.”

Beyond a deepened sense of musical purpose, Hersch’s near-death episode left him with compelling images: Eight specific dreams — some disturbing, others lovely, one focused on Thelonious Monk, whose music has long been a fixture within his repertoire. In collaboration with writer/director Herschel Garfein, Hersch turned those images into “My Coma Dreams,” a 90-minute production that blends his music with theatrical interpretations of his dreams and experiences, supported throughout by video projections. A single actor and singer, Michael Winther, plays both Hersch and his domestic partner, Scott Morgan.

“My Coma Dreams” was commissioned by New Jersey’s Peak Performances and premiered at Montclair State University’s Alexander Kasser Theater in 2011. It is a remarkable and touching work, by turns alarming and funny, tense and tender, showcasing equally Hersch’s deep love of, say, Thelonious Monk’s music, and his deeply loving relationship with his partner.

From the start, “My Coma Dreams” has held special appeal for medical professionals. After a performance in Berlin, for the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Hersch told me, “More than one doctor came up to me afterward to say, ‘This piece is going to change the way I practice medicine.’” The doctors were especially moved by depictions of Morgan’s point of view. The separate experiences of patient and loved one form one duality wrapped into Winther’s double roles, which he delineates with grace.

Dr. Rita Charon, executive director of Columbia’s Program in Narrative Medicine, explained, “As a physician and educator, I believe that this production cuts right to the core of representation and what it means to be a patient, a doctor, a caregiver — to be human.” According to Scott Alderman, who is administrative director, the Program in Narrative Medicine intends for physicians and clinicians “to better understand the people that they’re serving, and their role. The arts, and storytelling in particular, are especially valuable to that end. Fred’s story works toward that goal on several different levels at once.”

The production has long deserved a New York City premiere. Alderman expects the audience at Columbia’s Miller Theater to include clinicians and musicians, side by side, along with medical students and jazz fans. What they’ll see is a dream world set to music that relates some deep truths and stark realities. Here’s how I closed my 2011 Wall Street Journal piece on the show:

“My Coma Dreams” leaves off with Mr. Winther, as Mr. Hersch, confronting the lonely, humbling frustrations of rehabilitation. It merely suggests the triumph represented by the real man out of the spotlight, playing piano. The song that opens and closes the show, “The Knitters,” concludes with the line, “We end as we begin.” Mr. Hersch’s life and career, which very well might have ended, didn’t. The luck, love, and persistence revealed in that turn of events, and those inscrutable dreams, appear to have fostered a fresh creative start.

The major 1994 Tate Gallery retrospective of artist R.B.Kitaj was meant to be the pinnacle of the artist’s career. Instead, it has since famously been known as his breaking point, when art critics heaped what one curator later deemed as “a cascade of vitriol” upon the exhibition, causing Kitaj to eventually depart from the U.K. in 1997.

Now, a new British retrospective, the first since the artist’s suicide in 2007, sheds more light on what Kitaj had later dubbed “the Tate War.” In addition to more than 100 paintings and drawings presented in a joint show, “Analyst for Our Time” at Pallant House and “The Art of Identity” at the Jewish Museum London, also reveals letters from the fiasco, including a previously unexhibited (and particularly memorable) note from the artist’s friend Lucian Freud.

Though born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, Kitaj had settled in the U.K. and made his career within the London art scene after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1959. In the mid-1990s, when the Tate retrospective took place, he’d enjoyed a comfortable within that art world, respected by his peers and friends including Lucian Freud, David Hockney, and Frank Auerbach, among others.

And the show had started well enough. “The opening itself was a really euphoric occasion, large numbers of people from the art world, and a real kind of confirmation of Kitaj's dedication over the years,” retrospective curator Richard Morphet told The Observer’s Tim Adams recently. But it didn’t last. The next morning, scathing criticism flooded in, accusing the artist of overbearing pretension. Andrew Graham-Dixon and Brian Sewell were particularly virulent in their attacks, the latter describing Kitaj as “a vain painter puffed with amour propre, unworthy of a footnote in the history of figurative art.”

The artist was deeply affected by these reactions — and his depression took a tragic turn when his wife, the painter Sandra Fisher, died two weeks after the close of the exhibition from a brain aneurysm. In Kitaj’s perturbed mind, the critics had killed her. “They aimed at me and they got Sandra instead,” he said at the time.

Several of the artist’s friends were profoundly upset by the show’s critical reception. Among them was the architect Colin St. John “Sandy” Wilson, who attempted to coordinate an official response of support by starting a round-robin letter. Hockney,Peter Blake, and Leon Kossoff were among those signed it. So was Auerbach.

Freud declined. On view for the first time, alongside Wilson’s response, the letters, and correspondence from Kitaj to Wilson and his wife MJ spanning 25 years, is his delectable missive, which reads as follows:

Dear Sandy,

Though it’s often a good idea to write to someone in order to object, agree, question, or ridicule anything they may have said or done (or even to challenge them to a duel or ask them to lunch), I feel it’s pointless to gang up on a third rate critic when you don’t consider him seriously. As they so wisely say in Ireland: What do you expect from a pig but a grunt. Regards. Lucian.

“Many thanks for your splendid note which I have passed on to a delighted RBK,” answered Wilson. “He’s still licking his wounds — no one can stop us all from doing that, but at least he’s getting a good laugh out of it as well.” Kitaj went on to paint a series of pictures inspired by his late wife, and the “Tate War,” including the “Killer Critic Assassinated by His Widower, Even,” presented at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition of 1997. The same year, he relocated to Los Angeles with his young son Max. And, if the episode in 1994 stands now as an explosive moment in Kitaj’s life, the greater trajectory of his career is far more memorable.  

Comedian Seth MacFarlane says that he would not host the Academy Awards ceremony again, after TV critics panned Sunday's show. The "Family Guy" creator and star was asked on Twitter whether he would host the Oscars a second time around, and he replied: "No way. Lotta fun to have done it, though."

MacFarlane's response came after TV critics slammed the telecast, in which 40.3 million Americans saw Iran hostage thriller "Argo" take home the top prize for Best Picture. In a night of risqué jokes about female nudity and zingers about gays and Jews, MacFarlane, 39, poked fun at himself in an opening sketch with William Shatner in which the "Star Trek" star told him he was in danger of being deemed "the worst Oscar host ever."

While some critics lashed out at MacFarlane's hosting, others placed more blame on the overall song-and-dance-heavy show, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, which ran for three and a half hours. MacFarlane's appeal among young people did though provide an 11 percent bump in the 18-49 demographic coveted by TV networks and advertisers. And overall viewer ratings were up, making for the largest Oscar audience in three years.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Lawrence tripped more than once at the Oscars: the actress forgot to thank "Silver Linings Playbook" director David O. Russell and producer Harvey Weinstein in her acceptance speech as Best Actress for her role in "Silver Linings Playbook." The actress released a statement to Entertainment Weekly, apologizing for forgetting them and praising their work.

An inconclusive vote in Italy’s parliamentary elections on Monday has led to a crisis that leaves the future of the country wide open. No single group has enough support among the people to take control of the government. Pier Luigi Bersani’s center-left coalition narrowly won the lower house of parliament (reportedly by less than 0.4% of the vote), while scandal-ridden former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, riding the waves of a perplexing political resurgence, was leading in the upper house due to his support in several regions that carry more senate seats, which would give him veto power, reports the New York Times.

Berlusconi demanded a recount of the lower house votes on Monday night and the various coalitions are reportedly hashing out a plan to move forward. The only thing for certain is that current Prime Minister Mario Monti is the clear loser in this battle, gaining little support with only 10% of the vote in both the lower and upper house. He essentially came in fourth place to a surprising candidate and the only person amid all this turmoil we can safely call a winner: comedian Beppe Grillo.

A joke-man famous in Italy for his appearances on variety shows and commercials, Grillo began to move toward social and political satire in the late 1980s, criticizing the former-Italian Socialist Party and their leader, Bettino Craxi, for widespread corruption. These jokes effectively, if not officially, got Grillo banned from Italian television. (It’s worth noting that much of the Italian media is owned and operated by politicians or men linked to politicians.) Grillo began making noise again in 2007 when he staged a rally across 20 cities in Italy, calling out politicians in office who had been convicted of crimes. More than two million Italians attended the rally in whole. In 2010, Grillo started the Five-Star Movement through his popular blog, which has quickly gained traction among a wide swath of people in Italy who are losing jobs, fed up with austerity measures, and disillusioned with both sides of the political spectrum. With the initial plan to form a lose group to represent people who are dissatisfied with the current political system, Grillo has inadvertently shut down parliament.

Since the Five-Star Movement is not part of one of the two major coalitions, Grillo was never going to be in a position of power. But the ruckus he’s caused has forced Italian politicians to take him seriously, and even try to bring him into the fold. As of this writing, the Guardian has reported that Bersani has publically reached out to Grillo, asking him to join his coalition. They may not want Grillo around but they have no other choice.

Even more amazing is that Grillo gained all this support without the help of traditional media – he refused to take part in debates, did not grant interviews, and gathered his supporters through his blog and social media.

The closest parallel we have in the United States is a figure like Stephen Colbert, a satirical comedian and talk show host who, through skewering the political system, managed to gain serious clout among people in left-leaning circles. Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” held with partner-in-crime Jon Stewart, was attended by 215,00 people in 2010. Even so, it’s hard to imagine Colbert actually being elected, or creating much of a stir, in the United States. Would Colbert have to drop the brash, sharp wit of his persona? Would the people who support him still take him seriously? He’s too funny, too good of an actor, too real – the only actors we elect are b-movie villains and action stars.

Grillo’s in a tricky position right now. If he refuses to join one of the main coalitions – and part of his campaign has been a refusal to join said coalitions – he may lose his chance to make a serious change. But if he does join with Bersani, his cooption into the official system may cost him the support of the young people who were attracted to his satirical attack on the political process. Is it possible for him to have the best of both worlds? Can he make change through comedy from the inside? Or does the satirical bite come from being an outsider to the process, and remaining there?

– New Picasso Discovered: While restoring one of Pablo Picasso's oldest works, the staff of Barcelona's Picasso Museum discovered an even earlier portrait hidden on its cardboard backing. Affixed to a portrait of Picasso's mother painted in 1896 — when Picasso was 15 — is a charcoal drawing of a man with a pipe that researchers believe was created even earlier. "His level of knowledge [at a young age] was greater than we thought it was," said the Picasso Museum's chief restorer Reyes Jimenez. [Olive Press] 

– NFL Player Offers Gauguin in Hail Mary Ponzi Scheme: Former National Football League player Russell Allen Erxleben was arrested last month on charges of luring investors into a $2-million Ponzi scheme that included the opportunity to invest in a Paul Gauguin painting, "The Sorcerer of Hiva Oa," which he claimed could be worth as much as $58 million. Erxleben, who remains in custody and will plead not guilty, allegedly told would-be investors that he needed $75,000 to further the process of authenticating the supposed Post-Impressionist masterpiece, demanding $25,000 up front. [TAN]

– National Academy Joins 21st Century: For the first time in its 187-year history, London's National Academy has included photographers, video artists, and performance artists among its annual inductees. Until 2011, only artists categorized as painters, sculptors, printmakers, or architects were eligible to be voted into the Academy. Among the 23 newly elected artists are Joan Jonas (for video and performance), Cindy Sherman (photography), and Bill Viola (video). Each new member will donate an artwork to the Academy. [AiA]

– Performa Launches Pavilions Program: Taking a page from the Venice Biennale, New York's Performa biennial will launch a new national pavilions program, called Performa Pavilions, this fall. The organization will collaborate closely with artists and curators from inaugural participants Norway and Poland to commission major new works. Norwegian curator Randi Grov Berger will also join Performa for six months leading up to the biennial. "I wanted to find a way to involve other countries, other cultures, in a profound way," Performa's founder RoseLee Goldberg said. [Gallerist]

– Manifesta 10 to Take Over Hermitage Museum: Next year the tenth edition of the European biennial of contemporary art, Manifesta, will be staged at St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum, the most high-profile venue to date for the roving exhibition, which has previously taken place in off-the-radar locations like Slovenia, Cyprus, and, most recently, a former mine in Genk, Belgium. The East-meets-West theme of the biennial's 20th anniversary edition will span exhibitions at Catherine the Great's storied museum — which marks its 250th anniversary next year — and other venues in St. Petersburg that have yet to be announced. [Press Release]

– Early Serra Sculpture Saved: "Shift," a long concrete installation that Richard Serra created in 1972 in King Township north of Toronto that has been recently threatened by real estate development, will be designated a site of "cultural heritage value" by the municipal government. "We would be culturally ignorant idiots," said township councilor Avia Eek, not to preserve the sculpture. "What we need next from the township is a bylaw that will allow building standards to be applied to the piece so that if it needs repair and maintenance the township is in the position to do something about it," said former chair of the township's heritage committee Fiona Cowles. [Globe and Mail]

– New Creative Rights Caucus Promotes Copyright Protection: Artists of all stripes have a new venue to voice their concerns in Washington. Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) and Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) have launched the Creative Rights Caucus, which aims to educate both Congress and the public "about the importance of preserving and protecting the rights of the creative community in the U.S.," according to a statement. The group seeks to promote and protect the "copyrights, human rights, First Amendment rights, and property rights" of artists and creators. Maybe this means a renewed interest in the controversial artists' resale rights? [Deadline]

– Museums' Most Fragile Artifacts Brought to Light: For her new book "The Secret Museum," Molly Oldfield visited institutions around the world — from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to the British Dental Association Museum— to research and photograph artifacts that have been deemed too fragile to exhibit. "[Sir Isaac] Newton’s fabled apple tree once stood in the garden of his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire," Oldfield writes in an entry about a few wooden artifacts at the Royal Society of London. "In 1800 the inspirational tree blew over, but the owner of Woolsthorpe saved some pieces of it. On a shelf in the cool basement of the Society’s London HQ are two fragments, as well as two rulers and a prism made from the wood." [Telegraph]

– Buyers of Purported Lost Da Vinci Make Their Case: In 1998 three thrift store combers picked up a painting on the cheap in Laroque that they claim is a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci. They have spent the last 15 years showing the work, affectionately dubbed "The Madonna of Laroque," to experts and scholars in hopes of strengthening their claims of its authenticity. Though many remain skeptical, the work still managed to attract some 460,000 visitors during a recent special exhibition in Japan under the auspices of media giant Fuji, where it was attributed to da Vinci's studio. [Le Figaro]

– Michael Connor Joins Rhizome: The New Museum's hub for new media has appointed Michael Connor to the recently created position of editor and curator. Connor's curatorial work focuses on artists' responses to cinema and new technologies. As the head of exhibitions at BFI Southbank in London, he oversaw the development of an interactive moving image archive designed by Adjaye/Associates as well as a gallery dedicated to artists' film, video, and new media. [Rhizome]

ALSO ON ARTINFO:

SHOWS THAT MATTER: Punk, Funk, and D.C. Street Art Meet in Corcoran Exhibition

Ahmed Alsoudani on Traditions of Violence in His New Show With Bacon and Guston

“What Do You Expect From a Pig But a Grunt”: R.B. Kitaj’s “Tate War” Letters

Massive Montreal Exhibition Tracks 3,000 Years of Peruvian Cultural History 

Hyper-Realist Sam Jinks to Represent Australia at Venice Satellite Project

VIDEO: Takesada Matsutani, Continuing the Gutai Spirit

For more art news throughout the day, check ARTINFO's In the Air blog. 

Frank Capra’s 1948 political drama “State of the Union,” which was the fifth of the nine movies to co-star Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, is to be remade.

Variety reports that the independent companies Identity Films and Flat Penny Films have acquired the underlying rights to Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse’s 1945 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which ran for 765 performances on Broadway. Producers Anthony Mastromauro of Identity and Amy Lanier of Flat Penny are currently seeking screenwriters for the project.

Hollywood excels at animating dinosaurs, so reinvigorating the out-of-touch Republican Party might be part of the thinking behind the reboot – but don’t bet on it. It’s the story of an airplane industrialist, Grant Matthews (Tracy), who has left his wife, Mary (Hepburn), for his much younger mistress, Kay Thorndyke (Angela Lansbury). A newspaper proprietor with Lady Macbeth’s ruthless ambition, she plans to set him up as the Republican dark horse presidential candidate.

The playwrights based Matthews and Thorndyke’s relationship on Wendell Wilkie’s affair with Irita Van Doren. He was the liberal GOP dark horse candidate who ran against FDR in 1940. She was the longtime editor of the New York Herald Tribune book review.

Thorndyke intends to use her newspapers to deadlock the 1948 Republican Convention so it will choose the idealistic Matthews over the likes of Thomas E. Dewey (who stood and lost in the 1944 and 1948 presidential elections) and Robert Taft. Matthews is persuaded to run and is supported in public during the campaign by Mary, leading to a rapprochement worthy of the Clintons.

After drastically compromising his principles by making deals with special interest groups, Matthews realizes he has become a puppet of chicanery and corruption. He denounces his supporters and manipulators in a live radio broadcast, and withdraws his candidacy. Mary touts the 1948 Democratic candidate Harry S. Truman as the next president. Truman loved the film and saw it many times. Capra later bragged in his autobiography that Charles Alldredge, a Truman campaign aide, wrote in Variety in January 1949, that “this writer believed this film confirmed his courage, determination not to quit” the race. 

Because of the war, Hollywood made few films dealing with domestic politics in the 1940s. Of the others that were made, the most significant were Capra’s “Meet John Doe” (1941), a virtual appeal to demagoguery; George Cukor’s “Keeper of the Flame” (1942), also starring Tracy and Hepburn and influenced by “Citizen Kane”; and Robert Rossen’s “All the Kings Men” (1949), based on Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-winning novel, which was inspired by the life of assassinated leftist Louisiana politician Huey P. Long. (Whereas the latter won the Best Picture Oscar, the 2006 remake was a failure.)

Although Capra’s naïve or willful belief in the idea that one honest man can stem the tide of corruption in America acquired a mythic resonance in “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936), “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), and “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), it is an idiotic myth – a dangerous rejection of the grinding mill of politics and the kind of necessary deal-making depicted in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”  

By the time he came to make “State of the Union,” Capra was not only out of touch with the political zeitgeist but beginning to lose his touch as a filmmaker. RKO, which had lost money backing Capra’s Liberty Films on “It’s a Wonderful Life,” refused to shell out $2.6 million for “State of the Union.”

Although Clark Gable and Gary Cooper has been sought to play Matthews, when Capra learned that Tracy wanted the part, the film landed at MGM, Tracy’s studio. In his biography “Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success,” Joseph McBride notes that Claudette Colbert, scheduled to play Mary, forced Capra to accept her cameraman of choice, but then dropped out when the director refused to allow her to finish each day at 5 p.m., an hour earlier than was the industry norm. She was replaced four days before shooting by Hepburn, who had been working with Tracy on the script. Capra made the film for $2,150,000, bringing it in ahead of schedule. 

Adolphe Menjou, who played the movie’s Republican strategist, was a devout anti-Communist member of the McCarthyist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and in 1947 had cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee. This brought him into fierce conflict during shooting with Hepburn, who was a member of the liberal Committee for the First Amendment, which had supported the blacklisted Hollywood Ten.

Turner Classic Movies’ website records that Menjou said, “Scratch a do-gooder, like Hepburn, and they’ll yell, ‘Pravda.’” Tracy allegedly retorted, “You scratch some members of the Hepburn clan and you’re liable to get an ass full of buckshot.” Hepburn said that Menjou was “Wisecracking, witty ­– a flag-waving super-patriot who invested his American dollars in Canadian bonds and had a thing about Communists.”

Generally well reviewed, “State of the Union,” which opened on April 3o, 1948, made $3.5 million in domestic rentals, becoming the year’s 13th highest grosser. Myles Connolly and Anthony Veiller’s adaptation lacks the play’s teeth, however. Also missing is the vitality and visual mastery of Capra’s 1930s films and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Because Capra was a closet reactionary who coated himself in a veneer of righteous liberalism, as McBride revealed in his book, he comes across as a fence-sitter. His films’ championing of the neighborliness of the common man is a trite response to political exigencies. Matthews’ abandonment of his political career, McBride says, made “State of the Union” Capra’s “elegy for his abandonment of socially conscious filmmaking.” Ultimately, it’s as pessimistic and defeatist a work as “It’s a Wonderful Life,” given the collapse of George Bailey’s personal American Dream and his near suicide.

Whether the makers of the new “State of the Union” will have their would-be presidential nominee follow in the footsteps of Tracy’s Matthews remains to be seen. But, whatever his leanings and quandaries, political disengagement is as useless an option in the 2010s as it was in the 1930s and ’40s. 

Yinka Shonibare has long nurtured an ambiguous relationship with the Establishment, past and present. But the artist, a prominent post-colonialist voice in Britain – who was born in London to a Nigerian family and grew up in Lagos – cherishes his recently awarded order of chivalry as Member of the British Empire with a pride that isn’t entirely ironic. Shonibare is a self-proclaimed dandy, an “insider and outsider,” and the 18th century, cradle of that empire, is a constant point of reference both for its political overtones and dazzling aesthetic. It thus seems particularly apposite that the artist should be having his largest U.K. show to date on the grounds of a former 18th-century aristocratic parkland, Bretton Hall, which has been occupied by theYorkshire Sculpture Park since 1977.

Entitled “FABRIC-ATION,” the exhibition, which opens to the public on Saturday (through September 1), is unsurprisingly full to the brim with the “African” cloth that has been the artist’s trademark for almost two decades. First manufactured by the Dutch using Indonesian patterns, the material is still printed in Europe, and consumed mainly in West Africa. “It’s a very strong signifier of trade routes, of histories, of geographies — all wrapped up in this one material,” said YSP’s director of Programme Clare Lilley at yesterday’s opening. And here it is everywhere, tailored in the historicist costumes that dress up Shonibare’s mannequins (compressing in one sculpture both colonizers and colonized, and more generally oppressors and oppressed); pin-tacked to paintings; even acting as the skin of a cute alien family – a not-so-subtle marker of Shonibare’s investigation of “Otherness.”

The adoption of a motif so conveniently combining bright patterns and politics has been a blessing and a curse for the artist. Although it provided him with a “brand,” its repetitive use has led to a flattening out of his production, and accusations of one-trick-ponyism. The YSP survey demonstrates a real attempt to single out the different threads in Shonibare’s practice. Looking at this dense presentation, it becomes clear that the fabric serves an array of distinct topics, of which post-colonialism and hybrid identity are only two of the most central. The omnipresence of conflicts, the threat of global warming, and food-sustainability are key concerns for Shonibare. “He’s dealing with very hefty subjects but with an amazing lightness of touch, and always with a sense of exuberance and beauty,” said Lilley. This “exuberance and beauty” owes much to the flamboyant cloth.

When I met Shonibare back in 2009, he told me about what he calls his “Trojan Horse approach”: the use of a seductive lexicon to sugar the pill of his criticism. “When people see an artist of African origin,” he is quoted saying in the YSP’s exhibition guide, “they think: oh, he is here to protest. Yes, okay, I am here to protest, but I’m going to do it like a gentleman. It is going to look very nice. You are going to invite me to your museums because the work is nice, and then when I am inside it, it is too late.” Perhaps the most unsettling overtly political series of pieces in the show is the group of “Revolution Kids” (2012): three child-sized mannequins, two with a taxidermied fox head, one with a calf's head. They wear 18th-century style costumes in Shonibare’s signature batik, and hold Blackberry telephones and replicas of Colonel Gaddafi’s gold-plated handgun. The London riots and their fashion-conscious mobs of disillusioned youths perfectly coordinated via BlackBerry Messenger come to mind, and so does Arab Spring. The group tackles recent dissent in the same way Time Magazine chose “The Protester” as “person of the year” in 2011. In both cases, though, the amalgam between mostly unrelated upheavals feels forced and uncomfortable. Picking one fight per sculpture would have greatly benefited the clarity of the message – if broadcasting such a message were ever the artist’s intention.

But no matter how idea-led, there’s always an obvious enjoyment of the material, of the colors, textures, or the craft of well-tailored garments in Shonibare’s production. “I may be interested in a number of issues, but primarily I am an artist, and my job is to take people elsewhere,” the artist has said. “My job is to create a wonderland for them.” The “Revolution Kids” are fairytale characters, celebrating the imaginative power of childhood and its subversive potential, showing that Shonibare is increasingly embracing his formalist tendencies. The exhibition’s two new outdoor sculptures (co-commissioned by YSP and Stephen Friedman Gallery) are a case in point. Lilley described these oversized, fiberglass replicas of batik squares (“Wind Sculptures I and II,” 2013) as a “new departure” for the artist. Their bright, convoluted forms, dramatically contrasting with the gray Yorkshire sky, suggest sails or flags flapping in the breeze. Among Shonibare’s most resolutely abstract pieces so far, they proudly announce that his enduring love affair with batik has just taken yet another new turn.

PARIS — As often as Marc Chagall’s figures fly off the ground in his paintings, there’s often the impulse to bring the painter himself down to earth: hunt down historical considerations, to tie him to the real. The Russian artist lived through the 20th century almost in its entirety — he was nearly 100 when he died in 1985 — experiencing two world wars, a genocide in which he was deemed “degenerate” by the S.S. regime, and fleeing Vichy France in 1941. However often his work lived in the imagination, it’s hard to forget these events existing in the background of the artist’s life.

But as much as the exhibition “Marc Chagall, Entre Guerre et Paix,” currently on view at Paris’s Musée du Luxembourg, does put focus on the political context of the artist’s works, it doesn’t de-sentimentalize any qualities of work that was, overall, tied much more to autobiography than to any historiography. Featuring 102 works, including oil paintings on canvas and paper, but also ink drawings, preparatory gouaches, watercolors, and pencil drawings, the exhibition (on view through July 21) translates to “between war and peace” — a nod to Tolstoy— and is centered around the artist’s depictions of both themes in the span from the start of the first world war to his post-war period later in the south of France.

The show has the advantage of showing his works that have explicit references to the war: black and white drawings (The Salute, The Wounded Soldier, and Departure for War, all from 1914) and paintings with darker tones, such as War, painted in 1943, with its dirty whites, yellows, and reds, and an almost transparent figure lying on the ground, arms outspread. But the compositions constantly draw from Chagall’s personal life, including works of his wife Bella, and of the Russian culture of his childhood. His numerous references to Judaism are more related to his illustrations of biblical scenes (Abraham Mourning Sarah, 1931) than to a perspective on denouncing the atrocities of the time: In Chagall’s work, contemporary suffering is essentially evoked through allegory with the recurring crucifixion theme. As the painter said himself in 1958: “I found wars, revolutions, and everything that goes with them… But also, I met rare people, and contact with them often calmed me and persuaded me to persevere. More clearly and more distinctly, with age, I feel the relative rightness of our paths and the ridiculousness of everything that is not obtained through one’s own senses or one’s own soul, that is not pervaded by love.” And the exhibition also features the whimsical or dreamlike qualities most associated with Chagall: landscapes dominated by color, levitating couples over the tiny roofs of villages and towns, animals with green and blue fur. It’s hard to escape the presence of emotions and fantasy (and, indeed, one part of the exhibition is titled Toward Dreams).

Essentially, Chagall didn’t paint history; he told stories. He was never tempted by abstraction, and his art is almost literary, often against the grain of the aesthetic experiments of his time (despite his  Cubist and Constructivist temptations and latent Surrealism). This is what brings him closer to Tolstoy (aside from his Russian nationality) than to Breton, Matisse, Picasso, or Modigliani. And what the exhibition does reveal, as is often with shows that span long periods of time, is a sense of an evolution of themes and technique. The most convincing examples are when two versions of the same subject are compared: as with two views of Chagall’s hometown, one from 1915-20, Above Vitebsk, with fragmented, Cubist perspectives; and another from ten years later, Rooster-Man Above Vitebsk, which features naïve representations and big patches of color. It is too bad that the exhibition doesn’t feature any works from Chagall’s pre-1914 duration in Paris, however, considered to be his most inventive period.

Critics might see a sentimental painter with stimulating beginnings and a disappointing maturity; those who love the artist’s work will instead have a nice panorama of how it evolved over time. And it likely won’t affect the artist’s popularity — as at auctions like the 2010 Christie’s sale of Bouquet of Carnations With Lovers in Green (1950) for $722,500— which has certainly not dwindled over time.

Nice’s Chagall Museum, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, also has a show of the artist’s work titled “Marc Chagall, from One War to Another” on view through May 20.

Three new productions by James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera, will headline the company’s 2013-14 season. Levine will be returning to the Met for the first time in two years, where he will conduct a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff,” Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte,” and Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” three operas the conductor has long been associated with.

“I am delighted to be back with the great Met company, conducting three operas I love with our incomparable orchestra and chorus,” Levine said in a statement.

Levine’s return represents only a small portion of the expansive new season. Fabio Luisi, the Met’s principal conductor, will be leading Gioachino Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” while three directors will be making their Metropolitan Opera debut: Deborah Warner, with a new production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” starring Anna Netrebko, Mariusz Kwiecien, and Piotr Beczala under the baton of Valery Gergiev; Jeremy Sams, with a new production of Johann Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus,” conducted by Adam Fischer and featuring new dialogue by playwright Douglas Carter Beane; and Dmitri Tcherniakov, with Romantic composer Alexander Borodin’s “Prince Igor,” conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and starring Ildar Abdrazakov.

Two more new productions will round out the season: Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys,” commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, conducted by David Robertson and directed by Bartlett Sher (“A work of dark beauty... a landmark in the career of an important artist,” according to the New York Times), while Richard Eyre stages the final new production of the season, Jules Massenet’s “Werther,” starring Jonas Kaufmann and Elīna Garanča.

The season’s repertory calendar includes Richard Strauss’s “Arabella,” “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” and “Der Rosenkavalier”; a revival of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” conducted by Los Angeles Opera Music Director James Conlon in celebration of the composer’s centennial; and many more.

Ten of the season’s performances will be simulcast as part of the “Met: Live in HD” series, shown in movie theaters globally. The 2013-14 season at the Metropolitan Opera opens on September 23. 

The best show on television right now is something you probably haven’t been watching, and soon enough might not have the chance to. HBO’s “Enlightened” – about a woman who moves back in with her mother and reenters her former corporate environment after a shocking meltdown – will air its second season finale this Sunday. The show’s painfully low ratings, a reflection of its unmarketability despite critical acclaim and awards, have caused the threat of cancellation to loom large over its future. Creator Mike White, who writes every episode himself and has directed six of the show’s 18 episodes, is currently staging a campaign to save the series, reaching out to fans on social media. “Enlightened” is a singular vision, a rarity on television, which makes its chances of surviving slim and support needed more than ever.

“I’m afraid this will be the best thing I ever do,” White said recently in an interview with New York Magazine. “I think it will be.”

“Enlightened” stars Laura Dern– in what is possibly the performance of her career (the type of performance that will be looked at a decade from now in awe) – as Amy Jellicoe, a divorced and troubled optimist on a mission to make the world a better place, seeking to attach herself to something with meaning even if it comes from a well of deep personal resentment. The show is not easy to pin down – if it’s a comedy, there are few, if any, straight jokes; if it’s a drama, why so much goofiness? “Enlightened” strikes an unparalleled tone of melancholy unlike anything else on television.

So why aren’t more people watching? For one, Amy is a difficult character to like in the traditional sense – she’s emotionally intense, narcissistic, and full of contradictions. This type of character isn’t new to television (just take a look at any show, from “Homeland” to “Mad Men,” and you’ll find them). But Amy is a unique creation in that the writing refuses to offer relatable points of entry. On a show like “Girls,” it’s easy to identify with the flawed characters because you know they’ll get through it – it’s just a phase, a waiting station before moving on to the next stage of adulthood. “Enlightened” requires a deeper personal investment, an inward turn. It works best when you look at Amy and, maybe painfully, see yourself.

The show is also a slow burn. Until the whistle-blower story this season there was really no traditional plot to speak of, allowing White to try things that are unusual for episodic television.

I realized “Enlightened” was doing something completely radical in the ninth episode of the first season, “Consider Helen.” Directed by Phil Morrison (a testament to the quality of the show is the caliber of directors who have worked on it, from Morrison to Todd Haynes), the episode leaves Amy behind almost completely and focuses on Helen, Amy’s mother (played by Laura Dern’s real-life mother Diane Ladd). Nothing happens. Helen goes to the grocery store, works in the garden, sits on the couch alone with her dog. We don’t get deep insight into her relationship with her daughter, no shocking reveal that would change how we view either character. It was a visual tone poem dropped in the middle of a television show on a major cable network.

It’ll be sad to see this series go. We are supposedly in a golden age of television, but few shows are taking the risks “Enlightened” has in two short seasons. Yes, “The Walking Dead” pushes violence further than anything ever has on television, and “Girls” talks about sex frankly, but those are hot button issues – shocking simply for the fact that they’re being discussed, not because of how they’re discussed. “Enlightened” is the bravest show on television because it drowns us in emotional honesty without softening the blow. Maybe we can’t handle it. It’s our loss.