danshamptons.com
arts & entertainment
December 28, 2012 Page 69
Favorite Exhibitions of 2012 It’s always difficult to select outstanding art exhibits from any given year. The challenge is twofold: first, what should be the criteria for “outstanding?” (That’s so complicated an issue, this critic doesn’t even deal with it.) Second, we might just as well admit that we end up picking our “favorite” shows. Then again, what constitutes “favorite?” Let’s face it: such a selection task is pretty subjective. Like last year’s choices, the student art shows at both Guild Hall and the Parrish Art Museum were extraordinary, especially considering the fact that hardly anyone cares about art in the American educational system. How many times, in fact, did we hear any presidential candidate mention the word ART? Congratulations to the local museums (and schools) for their continuing commitment to arts-ineducation. Another show that’s ongoing and special is the Annual Members Exhibit at Guild Hall, with area artists contributing to a non-juried presentation. Many works are exceptional, but more importantly, the venue highlights the arresting diversity of art in the Hamptons (although some might say there is a lack of variety when it comes to conceptual art, for example). Abstract art was bountiful as usual this year, but the most profound exhibits were mounted at the new Parrish Museum show (“Recent Acquisitions”) and at the current Guild Hall display from its permanent collections. If ever there were any doubts about
the importance of abstraction, these compelling perspective. There were, of course, some fine exhibits that exhibitions dispelled them quickly. Consider at the Parrish, for instance, Donald Sultan’s stunning centered on works other than the visual arts, “Polish Landscape 11” about Auschwitz, Keith like “Escape,” Guild Hall’s homage to video with Sonnier’s neon and aluminum sculpture and Bryan Laurie Anderson as a standout. And then there was an extraordinary example of Hunt’s “Veil Falls.” Or at Guild Hall, performance art: Joshua’s Light works by Perle Fine, Lee Krasner and Show at the Parrish Museum. Mary Abbot. Finally, there was a “show” of There were some salient solo sorts featuring architecture, exhibits as well this past year, facilitated by the East Hampton including Eric Fischl’s “Beach Life” Historical Society’s House and at Guild Hall, where his relationship Garden Tour. Particularly wonderful between figures evoked new were “Frogs Pond,” a modernist meanings. Also at Guild Hall were residence designed by Maziar recent abstract works by Frank Behrooz and the 19th century LoperWimberley (winner of the 2010 Artist Strada House. Each domicile has Members Exhibition) where music a different sensibility, Frogs Pond and art enjoyed another kind of filled with glass, wood, geometrically relationship. positioned beams and windows While two other solo shows were overlooking gardens and bridges. in much smaller venues, they were Conversely, the Loper-Strada House no less special, each in their own is a restored farmhouse, saturated way: Michael Knigin’s daunting Work by Ray Johnson. with owner Michelle Murphy’s commemoration of Anne Frank at Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor (“The Art of paintings and drawings of bygone days. Dried Remembrance”) and Andrea Cote’s psychological flowers, an old-fashioned kitchen and a piano room study at Dowling College’s Anthony Giordano Gallery complete the warm, inviting ambience that lingers (“Body of Evidence”). What made these exhibits even after we’ve left the home. We look forward to an even better 2013, equally unique was their masterful focus on both political saturated with art that stays in our hearts and minds. and personal themes. Overall, our favorite show was “Persistence For current exhibits at Guild Hall, 158 Main of Pollock” at the Pollock Krasner House where various artists used Pollock’s themes and styles in Street, East Hampton, visit www.guildhall.org or call their own work. Especially revealing were pieces 631-324-0806. For the “Recent Acquisitions” at the Parrish Museum, by Red Grooms, Vik Muniz and Ray Johnson, but it was curators Helen Harrison and Bobbi Coller 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, visit www.parrishart. who captured our attention with their creative org or call 631-283-2118. Courtesy Richard L. Feigen & Co.
By marion wolberg weiss
A New Novel Set In Publishing’s Wild Past men and women, and the effetes who kept their sexual preferences hidden,” There’s potential resonance hardly the condition of publishing for older East End readers today, which has largely moved in Anne Bernays’ short, well- online. The early ’50s were also when written novel, The Man on the the powerful House Un-American Third Floor (The Permanent Activities Committee, obsessing on Press). Set in the ’50s, the All Things Communist, destroyed story, according to publishers lives. As a side issue, the suicide Judy and Marty Shepard, of one such intellectual informs turns on the situation of the Bernays’ story and adds to the sense actor Tony Perkins “who that the tale hovers close to authentic moved his male lover into the biography. The book begins and ends with home he shared with his wife.” But coincidentally, the story also reflects the public coming out last the memoir-like disclosure by Walter year of Jonathan Galassi, a married editor and Samson, a well-off, assimilated Jew publisher at Farrar Strauss & Giroux. The Shepards who is editor at a major New York publishing firm: say that Bernays, the author of award-winning fiction “After news of the unusual goings-on in my house and nonfiction, and a longtime writing teacher, did finally escaped, like a gas leak from a faulty stove, some of my so-called not know about Galassi liberal New York City when she wrote the friends characterized book. She set the story A story that evokes the my life using words in the literary world that shocked even me: because this is what she closeted world of the ’50s by a ‘deplorable,’ ‘disgusting,’ knows best. major voice in the founding of ‘unnatural,’ ‘selfish,’ A major voice in the ‘hedonistic,’ ‘bizarre.’” founding of PEN/New PEN/New England He then adds that that England, Bernays is the didn’t actually happen wife of Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Justin Kaplan, with whom she but that he was met “with looks of incredulity fueled has co-authored books. Indeed, some of the most by moral judgment, averted eyes, hems and haws absorbing parts of The Man on the Third Floor have to and, in some cases, total silence.” The discrepancy do with the literary world of the mid 20th century, a reflects his ambivalence about coming out and the time when great publishing houses took on talented fact that psychologists then listed such “deviant authors discovered by smart and determined editors. behavior in their diagnostic bibles under ‘sickness.’” A memorable early scene describes Walter’s Publishing then, as Bernays’ narrator says, was “a refuge for assorted oddballs—alcoholics, oversexed Jewish heritage, precocity and bedding at sleep By Joan baum
away camp by a counselor, but in spite of this episode and a general sense that he was different from most other boys, disappointing his machominded father, Walter describes himself as “heterosexual.” He went to Harvard, served in the army and married an outspoken bohemian woman given to liberal causes with whom he had two adored children. In short, Walter had a comfortable life and lifestyle, even if it lacked passion. Then one day, a stranger from a carpet company arrives in his office to take measurements and, well, the heart wants what the heart wants. The attraction is immediate and electric. Walter hires young Barry Rogers as a chauffeur (even before he has a car) and installs him on the third floor of his Upper East Side brownstone. The narrative turns on Walter’s pleasure in his newfound situation, but the reader knows from that opening paragraph that disclosure is inevitable. The love triangle works for a while, with quickie meetings and satisfaction all around—or so Walter thinks. The reader, intrigued by how the truth will out, wishes in vain, though, for a scene as to how the outing occurs. The story also tends to veer at times into didacticism, as at the end when Walter says “It amused me, in a sick sort of way that so many people seemed to think homosexuality was catching: don’t let us work for the government, don’t let us into the armed forces, don’t let us drill your teeth, and don’t, whatever you do, let us teach math to your seventh-grader.” Though thin on plot complication and character development, the novel will prove good reading.