BUT, BUT, BUT.. IS IT 'ART?'

September 29, 2017

Thanks to a dear pal of mine, Michael Gregory, an actor you have seen a hundred times in features and on TV, I got a lesson in contemporary art and culture.  We often don't much think about 'culture'.. or at least I don't .. even though here in Glendale, California, we now have combined the Library with the Arts and Culture Department.  Glendale  'culture' is swinging one way and it will be an interesting swing as the City has hired a consulting firm to help make decisions about how Art in Public Places should be administered.  We have seen one huge installation curated by Ara Oshagan that was to commemorate the Armenian Genocide.  It was not to my tastes, but it was huge and expensive and took up the entire lawn at Glendale Central Park.  It was undeniable and that, to me.. is important, whether or not it is to my particular liking.  

What Michael Gregory did for me was very special.  He teases me now and then about 'art' and I love it.  His message was about a mortician in England who had an unusual collection. Is a collection of 3,000 penises 'art?'  That's what MG wanted to know.  I'll leave it at that.

But!  His note reminded me of the current controversy of the Guggenheim Museum of Art's installation of a video piece that was made in 2003 by conceptual artists, Sun and Peng: "Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other."  The Guggenheim installation is part of a survey of Chinese contemporary art.  Outrage by American visitors to this exhibit forced the Guggenheim to remove the video.  The link below shares  an essay by Ben Davis writing in Artnet News. It gives us some very interesting back story. I dobut that it will  change any Western Minds about cruelty to animals, but may expand the information on why this work is important in context.   Of course, most of us have a hard time putting things in 'context' because we are governed by our own personal prejudices and politics and limbic reactions to the world around us.  Stepping outside our own comfort zone is difficult at best and impossible at worst.  

Reading Mr. Davis's essay, the challenge was, for me, trying to understand a Chinese art thing that is far removed from my appreciation of what Art is to me.  

Many Los Angeles folks were challenged when the LA County Museum of Art spent ten million dollars on Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" that now sits on the grounds there.  I loved it because there was no way that anyone along the delivery route from Riverside, California to Wilshire and Fairfax in LA could not be involved.  Heizer's Big Rock involved thousands of people who may have never been to an art museum or gallery in their lives.  That, to me, is what Art is supposed to do: allow us to have an opinion and react.  If the artwork is not responded to in some way, is it really art? Is the response important?

That said, for those of you who have waded this far into my comments here, take a look at this essay.   Please copy and paste to read the essay.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/so-whats-really-going-on-with-that-disturbing-dog-video-at-the-guggenheim-1100417 

This is NOT to advocate for what is discussed in the essay.  However, being informed in a broader sense IS very important and for a culture to move forward, it must turn on what artists and others who are forward looking are doing in response to the Times. 

Michael Sheehan

September 29, 2017

Platinum Blonde

She was a platinum blonde.. that blonde that Jean Harlow made us sit up and take notice of.  Tattoos up and down her husky arms : no nonsense! Security door: electronic peep hole. Not the kind of office one might expect for this kind of business.  Industrial. The building, not the business.

She was one tough cookie with her smile locked up in a safe somewhere and any man who could crack that safe might have a shot at having a shot or two in a dive bar, dark, with leatherette banquettes and Sheldon Leonard banging on the cash register to give angels wings. 

Bullet proof hair: Glowing white at perfect  odds with her long sleeve tattoos snaking to her shoulders making a statement.  

I was never so happy to get out of an office as I was today, having been there for less than thirty seconds.  It could have been fifteen, but the exit door was stuck and the thought of her coming around the desk was frightening.

Tyrus Wong: American Master

September 10, 2017

I find myself in tears having experienced the American Masters : Tyrus Wong docu on PBS.  It's about art and discrimination and humility and skill and love..  Loyalty and ideas.. concepts to share and those that keep us moving along... 

The first ever film I saw was Bambi.  I understand that it was my dad who took me to see it. I've wondered if it was just the two of us. Pretty brave for a dad to take a three year old.. if I was that old.. to sit for an hour and ten minutes all by himself with me.  I was profoundly taken by the film and it was not for many years that I understood that the entire 'flavor' of this film was because of the influence of Tyrus Wong.  

I'd found one of those big old coffee table books about Bambi that was signed by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas who are credited with much of the result as this famous Walt Disney film.  I tried to get Tyrus to autograph the book, but letters to his home and my not going to the beach at Santa Monica to button hole him when he went to fly his amazing kites is now on me as I reflect on his work and his family and his sense of humor that sustained him until his death at the age of 106 last December.  

All of the shoulda/woulda/couldas bubble to the surface now and then and watching this very well executed docu this afternoon, brings life full circle.  Of course, the theme of Felix Salten's story, now overshadowed by the Disney film, has to do with birth, life and death.  The beauty of Wong's artistry has now won him a plaque in the honor courtyard at the Disney Studios.  Well deserved.

I think my feeling of loss also turns on losing a friend: a beautiful woman who makes art.  Having seen some of her Chinese water colors, I was reminded of her few pieces I've seen when early water colors of Tyrus's showed up in the film.  It's a delicate technique that one trusts to skill and the luck of the day and the sweep of a particular brush to make an ethereal and ephemeral.. something. 

Very few people will understand the importance of these artful connections: My sorrow at never having thanked Mr. Wong in person for my first movie experience... it stays with me to this very day... never having flown a kite with him..  for some reason, that is particularly sad..  Not everyone understands the joy of kite flying.  For those who do, you might tear up a little, too, if you watch this American Masters docu and see the joy on this old artist's face as his home made dragon flies and other gorgeous strips of color take to the skies on the ocean breeze.

Missed opportunities.  Thirty years ago at MoCA finding exquisite beauty and missing the boat. What can counter that? Nothing, really. but... Knowing that there is, somewhere in the world.. something that creates a spirit like Mr. Wong, who tagged our world with beauty and humility ..  that's a comfort on its own.  

Find the docu, artists.. and others..  American Masters: Tyrus Wong.   

Michael Sheehan

September 10, 2017

 

THE COMPANY THEATRE OF LOS ANGELES... AT FIFTY

September 3, 2017

I had the honor of spending an afternoon with a group of talented people yesterday, members and friends of The Company Theatre.  My association started in 1971 or 1972.   Having been introduced to The Company earlier by my dear friend, Ken Rugg was a blessing.   Ken was an avant garde director/ professor at CSULong Beach where I did a couple of summers as an actor and later taught for a year.  

The first show that I saw at The Company was a rock and roll odyssey that pointed up how quickly we may forget those who may have been our idols. It was called Children of the Kingdom.  The tiny space on Robertson between Olympic and Pico had an artsy 'flavor.' The walls were lined with used redwood planks and stained with boiled linseed oil. 

The band was on stage for the full length of the show: gritty and loud!  Gar Campbell played the rock star.   Jack Rowe directed the show (Russell Pyle is 98% sure) and Steven Kent was the musical director.

The dramatic climax of the play had Gar shot and seriously wounded.  He was hustled out the FRONT of the theater where we then heard the revving of a car engine and the screech of tires laying serious rubber as an actual car roared off to the hospital.  The stage is left empty except for the janitor, Donnie Opper.  He puts down his broom and picks up the mic that Gar has dropped!  He begins to sing!  Fickle we are, taking up with a new star!

////

Yesterday, at the Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, courtesy of Marilyn Fox, PRT's artistic director, fifty or more Company Theatre founders and members and friends gathered to see one another and share stories and remember.  Dennis Redfield, an original founding member of The Company, his lovely wife, Deirdre, their kids: Julia and Michael and Paul Linke did the heavy lifting to get a reunion together.  The event was very touching and filled with love and memories. It was pretty impressive to see that most of us really had not changed that much! (except for Michael Stefani, who seems to youthen every time I see him.) Fifty years.. (45 for me) since. Even though I am somewhat on the periphery of this wonderful group of people, the feelings that generate from being in the midst of what can only be described as 'magical' has influenced in a major way to define my life.  I am forever grateful. 

At the time I was invited to participate with The Company, The James Joyce Memorial Liquid Theatre was a major hit.  It was a fantasmagorical melange: flooding the senses with more than just an intellectual evening at the theatre.  This show and The Emergence stand out in memory as truly ground breaking theatre.   

At the time, Sylvie Drake and the venerable Dan Sullivan were the Theatre Critics for the L.A. Times.  Both Sylvie and Dan  championed the young company's exciting approach to making theatre.  Good ink!  (except for Sylvie's take on Michael McClure's The Beard!) 

A few years ago, the idea to do a documentary about the early origins of The Company was begun. Unfortunately, only one discussion was put on video.  I was remiss on not sitting down with Steven Kent informally to hear stories.  It's still a good idea. I would hope that having two or more founding members of the theatre just chat with one another to "remember when!?"  might happen.  What would Ken Burns do?  

After the reunion on Saturday, there seems to be interest in preserving the history of The Company Theatre's unique experiment.  One member wrote recently that it might be like Roshomon, the memories.  All the better, sez me.

Below is Sylvie's take on the reunion. She has given me permission to share it. Her memories of the halcyon days of being in a darkened space and witnessing what I believe was nothing short of practical magic.

"Dear All of YOU,

As the lone outsider among you, I cannot  thank you enough for inviting me to yesterday’s event. I was and am extremely honored. I was a rookie journalist when I first encountered the work of The Company Theatre and having lived in what had been a virtual theatrical desert except for a tiny handful of companies (The Player’s Ring, The Stage Society, of which I had been a member), to come across the explosion of creativity, inventiveness and sheer magic you all came up with was stunning and a huge encouragement. It was and remains a theatrical milestone in LA theatre history. Like all of you, I will never forget the joys of experiencing the beautiful work you invented and, for me, the privilege of writing about it.

You deeply touched my heart by including me in yesterday’s festivities. The framed program for THE EMERGENCE has hung over my desk at home ever since I saw that show. I particularly love it because it includes so many of your names.

Your work in the day was nothing short of a theatrical epiphany — and that awareness was alive in the space yesterday. Be SURE you develop the website that was talked about. It’s important, emotionally but also historically.

Thank you again for the past and the present. Here’s wishing every one of you, the very best. 

You’ve earned it.

Sylvie Drake"

Dear Sylvie,  You were never an 'outsider' because your enthusiasm and honest reviews brought The Company welcome attention and deserved praise. Thank you. 

 The deep emotions that rise with these memories is fundamentally unique and personal.  

You just had to be there. 

Michael Sheehan

September 3, 2017 

P.S. If you were around during the second breath of The Company on La Cienega, we are trying to find Barbara Grover.  Please, spread the word.