Silverlake Blvd.

Nudity & Costume @ the Getty

 

I ran into an old friend at “The Renaissance Nude”. It was by Raphael until it was attributed to Raphael’s teacher, Perugino. The pipe-player was Marsyas until experts started to i.d. him as Daphnis. Moreover, the Getty hung it in a LGBT corner, implying that Apollo and the piper are a couple. Does it make a difference?

 

If they’re a couple they don't seem to be having a good time. Apollo looks down – in both senses – on his companion. The piper is so absorbed in his music-making that he isn’t paying attention – despite the fact that Apollo is making an exhibition of his physical splendor. The piper is bald and not at all a Greek god, but Perugino (or whomever) has given him the beauty of someone wholeheartedly engaged in an absorbing task. He's the one you focus on.

 

Here’s where the name becomes significant. If he’s Daphnis, he’s going to be caught up in love triangle with some local nymphs which ends so badly for him that he devotes the rest of his life to sad songs. If he’s Marsyas, Apollo will take offense at his presumption in being a musician, and skin him alive. A lot going on in a 524-year-old, 15” x 11” rectangle.

 

 

The exhibition was such that it is possible to mention “the other Peruginos” on display, i.e. the big decoration with scenes from the Metamorphoses in the background and a “Combat between Love and Chastity” in the foreground; and an electrically charged “Baptism of Christ,” with Christ’s feet seen through the pale blue water of the Jordan.

 

 

But before the naked people from the Renaissance, we experienced how Rococo ladies got dressed at Maxwell Barr’s brilliant lecture/demonstration. He took us through the mechanics and logistics of how aristocratic Frenchwomen dressed throughout the day. I will never look at eighteenth century lace again without thinking about the extraordinary quantities of labor they embody, and their consequent function as a signifier of wealth.

 

Not to mention the labor of the women who put on and took off these signifiers! Barr encouraged our patient model to give frequent updates on how she felt at different stages - under the corset, the layers of heavily embroidered fabric, balancing on un-sensible shoes, ....

 

Alison Knowles @ Disney Hall

 

Last Friday Alison Knowles rebuked – in the friendliest and least self-important way – pretty much everything that has ever happened on the stage of Disney Hall.

 

For the duration, nobody knew what Disney Hall was for. Nobody knew why they were sitting in the audience. To watch a salad be prepared?

 

AK transformed the stage into a kitchen, and Disney Hall into a dining hall. It was performance without any of the things that are the justifications of conventional performances: no virtuosity, precision, intensity, seduction, drama, surprise, communication, ….

 

Instead of all that, we were suspended in uncertainty. Anxiety, but also curiosity. How long was it going to go on? Was the salad being made to eat? Were we going to get to eat it? How was that going to happen?

 

The audience – always the wild card – was mostly up to the challenge. There were some shouted out remarks. There was a mass dash for the exits as servers started distributing salad bowls to the audience. But, near the end, an outburst of “Thank you”s.

 

What other orchestra but the L.A. Phil would give Knowles a stage? Works conceived so far from the usual routines being given a chance to unsettle again, after 50+ years? Thank you, indeed.

Zulema Cusseaux on Soul Train, 1975

... who I know from Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance