cityArts
Edited by Armond White
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is The Godfather of superhero movies By Armond White
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an of Steel is the first superhero movie to be directed by a real filmmaker since Tim Burton took on Batman in 1989. Unlike Burton, director Zack Snyder’s sensibility derives from comic books and graphic novels yet his visual extravagance also contains the palpably erotic core of comic book fantasy. Snyder immediately invests the Superman story with this tactile realism, a feel for ancient legend. Opening scenes on the dying planet Krypton recall the stylization of 300 but with a slightly futuristic edge that never lapses into conventional superhero movie fantasy. (Snyder got that out of his system with Watchmen.) The arch otherworldliness of Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer) sending their newborn infant into outer space to survive Krypton’s destruction and preserve their heritage from the tyrannical threat of General Zod (Michael Shannon) also evokes a kind of classicism. It doesn’t play like sci-fi and when the story shifts to planet Earth where the alien boy KalEl is raised as Clark Kent, Snyder effectively creates a contrasting, charged-up realism. In Man of Steel, Snyder’s ingenuity--his realistic panache--prevents the Superman story from mainly appealing to either adolescent whimsy or adult camp. He makes a radical break from past Superman movies where cliché narratives, routine violence and a basic lack of seriousness are accepted as standard. Man of Steel is marvelous, serious fun which changes all that. Kal-El/Clark Kent (played by Henry Cavill) isn’t called “Superman” until late in the story; his history and identity are the film’s real subject. First seen bursting through flames as a Herculean physical specimen, his alien adjustment to Earth and humanity is a personal trial neatly conveyed through screenwriter David S. Goyer’s multiple flashbacks. While Snyder gives the alien’s feats
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New York’s Review of Culture . CityArtsNYC.com
Serious Fun a quality of wonder, Cavil conveys surprise, urgency and torment. Snyder is good at the physics of stress (The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole is a masterpiece, I promise you) which separates Man of Steel from The Dark Knight trilogy. Snyder’s consistent intermix of realism and legend upgrades the superhero genre. Cavil’s dramatic handsomeness recalls young Sean Connery’s exotic virility; his simultaneously otherworldly and legendary aspects suit Snyder’s sensuous action style--textured closeups of skin and capillaries, jet trails in the sky as he flies, his red cape’s heavy swoosh. No previous Superman achieved Cavil’s perfected gesture of drawing back his right hand when flying to exert physical and spiritual will. Converting iconography from District 9, the Transformer films and Independence Day, Snyder improves on the imagery, giving it a speedy, thrilling roughness, preferable to the usual unimaginatively slick CGI. What’s terrific here is that Snyder expresses Kal-El’s force, his will. The yearning to
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understand himself and his human-likeness gives the film depth. When Kal-El meets the earnest newspaper reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) their immediate attraction is so well acted it’s deeper than romance. Their passions meet and that’s Snyder and Nolan’s breakthrough. This is the most stirring, impassioned superhero movie I’ve ever seen. By emphasizing Kal-El’s conflict with his abilities, desires and his yet uncontrollable circumstances, Snyder discovers his meager genre’s richest potential. (One scene offers a beautifully concise Christ-parallel.) Lessons from Kal-El’s two fathers are sturdily presented by both Crowe and Kevin Costner (as Jonathan Kent) so that tests of his ideals and his strength against Shannon’s Zod (that Frankenstein brow suggesting political warp yet oddly touching like Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty) offer a continuum of masculine being. Eat that Luke Skywalker. Snyder doesn’t cheapen the “S” emblazoned on Superman’s chest. “In my world it means ‘Hope’” Kal-El says. That’s a significant
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difference from The Dark Knight trilogy’s nihilism. The fight against Zod is primarily ethical (“You have developed a sense of morality and we have not--which gives us an evolutionary advantage. If history has taught us anything, it’s that evolution always wins.”) Yet as Snyder envisions this battle, realism stays in scale with awe—something science can’t measure. As the Supeman-Zod fight escalates so does its 9/11 evocation and Snyder’s vision of urban destruction attains the poetry Michael Bay did not, alas, achieve in Transformers III: Dark of the Moon. That evolution comment evokes The Godfather; its implicit “you can kill anybody” suggests 9/11 annihilation which has fed the juvenile thrall of too many comic book movies, Snyder’s Superman--symbolizing hope--counters all that. Man of Steel allows sci-fi blockbuster audiences to finally merge from post-9/11 darkness. Thanks to Zack Snyder’s artistry, Man of Steel is The Godfather of superhero movies. Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair
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CITYARTS FILM
Sharecropping Sirens A radiant documentary honors the background singer By Armond White
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n Greil Marcus’ original review of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 “Gimme Shelter,” he wrote about “women who can shout like Mary [sic] Clayton--gutty, strong, and tougher than any of the delightful leering figures that are jumping out of the old Stones’ orgy. She can stand up to Mick and match him, and in fact, she steals the song. That’s what makes ’Gimme Shelter’ such an overwhelming recording--it hits from both sides, with no laughs, no innuendoes, and nothing held back. The Stones have never done anything better.” Marcus may have misspelled Merry Clayton’s name but his awe-struck (and awesome) review got everything else superlatively right. Merry Clayton’s solo on “Gimme Shelter” is one of the most astonishing performances in the history of popular music yet the singer’s near-anonymity is one of our culture’s saddest shames
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and that’s what the new documentary 20 Feet from Stardom sets out to rectify. Director Morgan Neville surveys the troops of mostly black female harmony singers who back-up the musical dreams of headliner artists. He searches out the women who can shout now in middle age who added grace and glory to innumerable hit records-Clayton, Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega, Judith Hill, even legendary Claudia Lennear (inspiration and personification of the Stones‘ “Brown Sugar”). Some discovered their gifts as preachers’ daughters, first learning harmony in church choirs; some tried Darlene Love and Merry Clayton brief or unsuccessful solo Others like Fischer found a sinecure as longcareers but all share stories of frustration: time back-up on Rolling Stones tours. Their Love suffered Phil Spector’s megalomania and stories are not about envy but the variables of was cheated of recognition; Clayton, Vega and fate and ego. Venerable blues singer Dr. Mable Lennear couldn’t catch the trend of popularity. John gives wisdom: “Check out your worth” but she’s also warning fans and listeners who remain ignorant of the human costs the music DRAWING biz demands. PAINTING Neville’s snapshots of the women’s maturity SCULPTURE excludes tragedy. Still beautiful, keen and PRINTMAKING good-humored, these sharecropping sirens have not received their due compensation PHOTOGRAPHY for journeyman work that proved to live VIDEO and remunerate other folks forever. Yet in ART THEORY their individual personalities they remain CLASSES FOR YOUNG ARTISTS vital as their voices. Fischer, shown on stage with Sting, delivers a virtuosic presentation REGISTER NOW! that’s all in a night’s work. “She’s a star!” Sting WWW.NATIONALACADEMY.ORG exclaims. But that ain’t the half of it. Note: 212.996.1908 Fischer’s brief solo career produced a Grammy NATIONAL ACADEMY SCHOOL win for the R&B hit perfectly titled “How Can 5 EAST 89TH STREET AT FIFTH AVENUE I Ease the Pain?” Such demonstrations of underrated and under-compensated artistry deserve a more serious study. Even though Neville’s aim is celebration, he tends to skimp his subject’s greatest contours: How female back-up singing evolved past segregation during the Civil Rights Era. How objectification mixed with discipline (“We were R&B’s first action figures” Lennear recalls her time as one of the Ikettes doing sexy calisthentics that anticipated Beyonce). How the subculture of Black vocalizing led to the specialized esthetics of the master Luther Vandross and the singular Cindy Mizelle whose Steely Dan chirping grew into the sound of Chic. How developing technologies like overdubbing and
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Auto Tune threatened to erase the background artists industry. These fascinating brief tales (annotated by Bruce Springsteen, Bette Midler, Patti Austin, Lou Adler, Max Greenwall, David Lasley and others) hold the history of American culture. Between Fischer’s insistent “I’m doing good!” and Clayton professing “My way of being an activist was to do the music” lie untold secrets of American perseverance. Clayton tearfully admits “I felt if I just give my heart to what I was doing I would automatically be a star.” Woe to thee, non-self-promoter But it’s also Clayton who rose from bed, beckoned to the studio to record “Gimme Shelter” and decided on the second take: “Uh huh, I’m gonna blow them out of this room.” In her heart she knew that they wanted something out of her; that though they needed and admired her they could/would never adequately pay her back and so with pride and courage she expended her artistry which is ultimately--though not always--without price. Neville does posterity a favor by separating Clayton’s vocal from the “Gimme Shelter” music track. The power of her personal artistic sacrifice, lent to Jagger and Richard’s concept-reifying and immortalizing it--still makes your hairs stand up on your neck. This isolated sound is one of the greatest, most unfair things on record. That there’s much more to these stories is implicit in Darlene Love’s radiant reflection on her youth: “Amazing isn’t it? I was talented and didn’t know it.” Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair
THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2013
Don’t Blink On “Blinkey” Palermo’s vehicles for color By Jim Long
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allowing the work to become monumental. A few favorite strategies repeat: a triangular edge intrudes into the field from the lower left corner: suggesting Klee’s transparent over-lapping planes, Popova and Malevich’s home-cooked geometries, or maybe the BMW logo. Edges are sometimes crisp, often fluid, in the manner of Beuys, always displaying a sure touch. The work suggests an embrace of artistic
GALLERIES CITYARTS intention based in geographic experience: Leipzig colors are yellow and blue; Dusseldorf red and white; Munich black and gold; Bavaria white and blue; Germany red, black and gold. Abstract form as vehicle for color is not new, and Palermo’s works on paper can appear to simply unpack Kandinsky or Mondrian and rearrange it horizontally, like a Warhol screen test. Yet the work is delightfully engaging. In New York, in 1976, it would have been outof-the-way: not unfashionable, simply from somewhere else. “To The People of New York” in 1977 looked like an import.
How to account for how good the work looks? It might be useful to think of it in context: the artist/musician communes of Germany in the 1960’s-‘70’s exploring nonhierarchical cultural forms. The slight melodies and driving rhythms of the band Kraftwerk (based in Dusseldorf; sharing members with NEU!) defined a cultural moment that escaped broad acceptance in American music. The insight that art and music can exist without rules, education, or tradition is difficult. Palermo reversed that idea, the beginning of work only he could envision.
alermo, born Peter Schwarze in Leipzig in 1943, was 34 when he died in 1977. He and his twin brother Michael were adopted by a couple named Heisterkamp and escaped to Munich in 1952. In 1962 he enrolled in the Kunstacadamie Dusseldorf, studied with Joseph Beuys and acquired the name “Blinkey” Palmero. David Zwirner gallery is NEW currently exhibiting “Palermo: Works on Paper 1976EUROPEAN 1977,” acrylic and graphite PAINTINGS works on paper mounted on GALLERIES cardboard: late work from 1250 –1800 an artist whose active period NOW OPEN spanned scarcely 15 years. The work is composed in parts, usually two, otherwise from three to twelve. Nearly all are loosely brushed variations on geometric figure/ground motifs in a limited range of red, yellow, blue, green, and black. The groups are uniform in size, elegantly framed and presented in rows echoing the minimalist aesthetic of the time. A special example is a study for To The People of New York City, 39 sketches for an extended work on a single sheet. Palermo, trained in graphic design before entering the academy, devised an engaging abstract vocabulary, part conceptual, part minimal, part arte povera based on sampling Kelly, Beuys. Mondrian, Tuttle, Marden, Malevich, Klee, Kandinsky, Popova, Rothko, Newman…how many others? Each “set” is grouped and experienced somewhat cinematically, like animation cells or montage. Palermo’s lasting contribution may well be his ability to impart a sense of locomotion to inherently static geometric form while avoiding illustration strategies. He is interested in the anonymity that is the root of monumentality in abstraction, but energetically resists Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes), Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga (1784–1792), detail, 1787–88, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jules Bache Collection, 1949.
NEW GRANDEUR FOR THE OLD MASTERS
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re-use
ways to your newspaper old
Use it as wrapping paper, or fold & glue pages into reusable gift bags.
2
Add shredded newspaper to your compost pile when you need a carbon addition or to keep flies at bay.
5
Use newspaper strips, water, and a bit of glue for newspaper mâché.
8
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Crumple newspaper to use as packaging material the next time you need to ship something fragile.
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Tightly roll up sheets of newspaper and tie with string to use as fire logs.
After your garden plants sprout, place newspaper sheets around them, then water & cover with grass clippings and leaves. This newspaper will keep weeds from growing.
Make origami creatures
Use shredded newspaper as animal bedding in lieu of sawdust or hay.
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Make your own cat litter by shredding newspaper, soaking it in dish detergent & baking soda, and letting it dry.
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Wrap pieces of fruit in newspaper to speed up the ripening process.
3
Cut out letters & words to write anonymous letters to friends and family to let them know they are loved.
6
Roll a twice-folded newspaper sheet around a jar, remove the jar, & you have a biodegradable seed-starting pot that can be planted directly into the soil.
9
Make newspaper airplanes and have a contest in the backyard.
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Stuff newspapers in boots or handbags to help the items keep their shape. Dry out wet shoes by loosening laces & sticking balled newspaper pages inside.
a public service announcement brought to you by dirt magazine. PAGE 14
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CITYARTS DANCE
Dance of the Disciples Five choreographers pay tribute to Bill T. Jones By Valerie Gladstone “He stands for so much politically, emotionally and visually,” says dancer choreography Heidi Latsky iin praise of Bill T. Jones of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. “He came along in the late ‘70s and broke all kinds of rules. He’s brilliant and daring. His works resonate in the dance world.” On the 30th anniversary of the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company, Latsky, Arthur Aviles and Catherine Cabeen, former members of the troupe, and David Parker, the founder and director of The Bang Company, and Maureen Whiting, g director of the Maureen Whiting ting Company, willl honor Jones with “Fivee Choreographers at Baruch,” a series of performances ormances at the Baruch Performing Arts Center ter June 25-29. It would be hard for anyone in the performing orming arts over the past 30 years not to count nt Jones as an influence. A MacArthur “genius” ius” grant winner, he has dealt with gay rights, AIDS, racism m and many other tough h subjects in highly ly charged dances ces packed with powerful movement. ement. Moreover eover he has also choreographed eographed for opera, theater ter and television, won innumerable umerable awards in the dance and theater worlds, and continues to revolutionize lutionize dance as a leader of New w York Live Arts organization. Latsky, atsky, a member of the Jones/Zane s/Zane company from 1987-1993, 7-1993, credits Jones with giving ng her an understanding of the he value of stillness in dance, ance, and by giving ng her, as a dancer, grounded unded and emotional movement ement to perform.
“Five Choreographers at Baruch,” appears at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, Lexington Ave. and 23rd Street, June 25-29. www.nypress.com
At the Baruch Center, she will present two pieces, “Solo Countersolo” and “Somewhere,” the latter a series of dances to various versions of the song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Inspired by Jones, Latsky has, since 2006, included disabled dancers in many of her works, most noteworthy, “Gimp” explaining why dance should be inclusive: “Bill felt no trepidation about including people of all backgrounds, shapes and sizes in his company,” she says. In Jones fashion this piece features four disabled performers, who make the song sing through their bodies. Cabeen, the director of Hyphen Dance Company, performed with the Jones/Zane troupe from 1997-2005 and now sets Jones’ works on companies all over the country. She will present two pieces, one of them the formal and ornate “Five Windows,” with the oud player, Kane Mathis. Aviles, a member of the company from 1987-1995 and the co-founder of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD). He has not only devoted himself to choreographing but also to giving
the Puerto Rican, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities a place to work and create - an outgrowth of Jones dedication to the disenfranchised. To celebrate his mentor, he will present the joyous “Cumpeanos Feliz,”named for a tradi traditional d tional Spanish Spanissh birthday song. Seattle-based choreographer Whiting thinks that simply being aware of what Jones was doing in the ‘80s, affected her. “No one had been so politically active in dance as Bill,” she says. “It changed completely how everyone thought of contemporary dance.” He is also noted for his theatricality, and her work, “belly,” in the upcoming tribute, follows in that line. Parker didn’t dance with Jones but he was deeply influenced by him too. “I love his mixture of formal and dry and how highly charged his works are,” he says. Parker’s witty pieces share a formality, clear in his new dances for the Baruch engagement, engagement entitled ”Unbridled” and “Groomed.” “None of us would have dared so much without Bill’s example.”
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