Page 38 April 12, 2013
arts & entertainment
danshamptons.com
“20 Under Twenty” and “Paperwork” and an American flag suggests a political theme. Photographs by Lea Winkler may also possess a Two very different exhibits political message, featuring people with flags draped are currently on view in the around their shoulders. Raphael Kustara’s painting of a man carrying a Hamptons, both conveying an interesting juxtaposition briefcase gets our attention as well: we only see the between emerging and figure’s hand and arm, a disorienting composition established artists. that makes us wonder what’s happening. The Amagansett’s Neoteric Fine juxtaposition of lines gives the work a “graphic” look Art evokes an edgy and often adding to its visual interest. Another piece that has a risk-taking approach by strong visual image is “Watercolor Illusion,” a digital newcomers under 20 years print by Brock Lownes. The use of negative space is old; Southampton Cultural particularly evocative. While “Paperwork” at the Southampton Cultural Center’s “Paperwork,” curated by Arlene Bujese, represents works by artists who have paid their Center doesn’t celebrate various media like the dues, developing an individual style and medium Neoteric exhibit, the works reflect the varied ways paper is employed. Such approaches are noteworthy through the years. Scott Bluedorn, co-owner of Neoteric Fine Art, has in every detail. Consider Ann Sager’s photographs come up with a good idea for his show, “20 Under titled the “Tides” series. Sager has a particular talent Twenty,” inviting artists from the recent student art for making the commonplace look extraordinary; exhibits at the local museums to participate. The abstract designs come washing in with the waves. The black and white photographs results are often successful and prove contribute to the mysterious forms that an abundance of talent. With some more are suggested. experience, we look forward to these Walter Schwab’s “On the Waterfront” emerging artists establishing their own is another photographic series, which “voice” and point-of-view. transforms ordinary forms (“gantries” At Neoteric, diverse media make for a or metal constructions on the Hudson) lively presentation, including portraits into beautiful compositions. Schwab’s (acrylics on canvas) by Lauren Rappa. penchant for infrastructure is apparent The craftsmanship is arresting and so is here, too, as it’s with his window series the perspective from a worm’s-eye-view. in Mexico where perceiving the interior Also potent is a sculpture by Geige Silver, becomes possible. History is also which takes center stage; the woman’s important to Schwab: there are only one dress is made of red, blue and white or two of these structures left. batteries and gives the impression of Ordinary objects also become an impending explosion. Silver’s digital extraordinary in E. E. Tucker’s collages print of a girl wearing the exact dress Work by Roseann Schwab By marion wolberg-weiss
Work by Raphael Kustura
where written words from a letter are rearranged into lovely patterns. The artist’s “Totem” is another arresting design with paper circles contributing to the overall effect. Besides circles, other shapes become extraordinary as well, like Hans van de Bovenkamp’s colorful hard-edged forms and Roseann Schwab’s rectangular collages alive with earth colors. While these images are different from Schwab’s familiar use of bright colors, there’s a sense of the past that’s especially eye-catching. The colors and shapes also recall ancient civilizations which are both dazzling and provocative. “20 Under Twenty” will be on view at Amagansett’s Neoteric Fine Art, 208 Main Street, until April 24. 631838-7518, neotericfineart.com “Paperwork” will be on view at the Southampton Cultural Center, 25 Pond Lane, until April 22. 631-287-4377
“Nothing Serious” Quite Something By Joan baum
Unlike the author who has a degree in philosophy from Harvard, 43-year-old Digby Maxwell, the sardonic protagonist of Daniel Klein’s new novel Nothing Serious (The Permanent Press), is, to his surprise, offered a job editing a small philosophy magazine, Cogito, in Vermont, for which he’s totally unprepared except that having no background in philosophy (well, he did read Kierkegaard for a few weeks) is what turns him on, when cynicism and pot don’t quite do it. He’d been out of work for more than a year, having lost the knack; he was told, of finding “the next new thing” for The Village Voice and then for New York Magazine. He’s also divorced, and estranged from his only child Sylvia, a verbal chip off the old block doing smut lit online in California. He takes the offer—it will once again test his bullshitting talents, not to mention providing Klein (the award-winning author of The History of Now and Plato and a Platypus walked Into a Bar) with another opportunity to show off his smarts and ability to fashion a shrewd, often hilarious critique of contemporary mores. When Digby’s not into tokes, he’s into taking serious aim—“potshots”(!)— particularly at academia and pop culture, though affectation anywhere, including his own as a putdown artist, defines his style. Nothing Serious is plenty serious as satire (which, of course, is a critical genre in the comic mode), probing the being and nothingness of mortal man’s eternal quest to know, to belong, to find a home in a
hostile universe that’s mostly of his own making. As the story line evolves, however, Digby finds himself in a strange, almost willing suspension of mocking disbelief—he starts to care about making Cogito a success, despite hostile colleagues and an indifferent owner, the widow of the founder, who hired him. And he begins to care deeply about a woman pastor at the local Unitarian church, a straight-talking skeptic with whom he senses instant simpatico. His change of heart, a genuine stirring, conquers his defensive “over-the-top nonchalance” as a New York City “wiseass.” Digby identifies with various philosophers who seem to reflect his moods, but he also increasingly questions his identifications so that he comes to accept what’s happening to him—slipping into love, without totally abandoning his wily ways. The reader roots for this “experienced garden-variety, low-grade manic-depressive,” and for Cogito, especially after Digby’s discovers that the owner is planning a kind of Mel Brooks Producers-like failure for the magazine. Style suits substance. Klein’s use of a limited third-person point of view—a good move for a protagonist who thinks he can objectify himself—is on occasion critiqued by italicized ruminations that present different analyses, while the narrative as a whole proceeds in the present tense so that real-
world action corrects Digby’s interior existential monologues. The “imposter, charlatan, quack in tweeds” finds himself for the first time in his life, smitten with an intelligence worthy of his own, but he can also still dish it out, as when he would shut up a Russian mathematician by “citing a fundamental dictum of logical positivism, namely that the whole enterprise of moral philosophy is about as rationally based as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” or heaven, which is the subject of Cogito’s first issue. The old Cogito was “enough to relax a recalcitrant sphincter.” Under Digby’s direction, it will strike a “delicate balance between snark and sapience.” And be accessible. But is Nothing Serious accessible? At one point in their growing Platonic (philosophically ideal) relationship (at least for now), Digby says to Mary that the stuff she reads is “awfully hard,” and he wonders about other “people who just don’t get the hang of abstract thinking.” Will they “get left out in the cold?” There are indeed lots of references and allusions to philosophy and philosophers in Klein’s novel—and ambivalence about the value of the discipline itself—but the reader doesn’t get left out in the cold. You don’t have to be, or have been, an academic to enjoy the send up here or what turns out to be an eccentric but engaging love story.