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Wooden Turnstiles

February 13, 2010 in Art, Books, History, Lost New York by Cyrus | 2 comments

In my last post, I mentioned that older son loves to read series of books — the longer the better. Before he read the Percy Jackson series, he read all of Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House books. He’ll still read the latest one for old times’ sake: he read the latest, Magic Tree House #43: Leprechaun in Late Winter and pronounced it “very good.” His little brother the kindergartener loves them too, so we read them aloud to him on the bus to and from school.

Appropriately enough given this week’s snowy weather on the East Coast, we’ve been reading book #36 in the series, Blizzard of the Blue Moon, which is set in New York in 1938 during the Great Depression. For those of you who don’t know the series, the premise is that eight-year-old Jack and seven-year-old Annie, two kids who live in “Frog Creek, Pennsylvania,” discover a magic tree house in the woods near their house: the tree house is full of books and when you point to one and say, “I want to go there,” well, you go there, wherever “there” is. Their first four adventures take them to the time of the dinosaurs, to the middle ages, and to ancient Egypt. They learn that the tree house belongs to Morgan le Fay, who is portrayed as the magical librarian of King Arthur’s Camelot. (She’s much friendlier than any other version of Morgan le Fay I’ve ever encountered: remember Helen Mirren’s characterization in John Boorman’s Excalibur?!)

The books are very formulaic, as Morgan sends them on various missions that last about 10 chapters. The description of the tree house embarking on its journey is always the same, and my son can now recite it by heart. He’s learning about genre, which is fine by me. But in book 29 Christmas in Camelot, Osborne varies her formula: it is Merlin who sends Jack and Annie on their missions, four of them to mythical places like Camelot, and four to real-life places like Paris at the time of the Exposition Universelle (for which the Eiffel Tower was built).

Blizzard of a Blue Moon is one of these Merlin missions, and my son is enjoying hearing about places he knows: like Central Park and the IRT subway, which costs a nickel in 1938. Reading the book made me remember those old cross-shaped wooden turnstiles that were still installed in a few subway stations when I was growing up. Here’s a picture from the New York Transit Museum:

Note the fare: 5 cents! (Click here for more information about this particular photo, which comes from a wonderful collection of photos and images at nycsubway.org. The site is a treasure trove for subway buffs; in addition to the pictures, there is a wonderful collection of map PDFs.)

By the way, Jack and Annie’s mission in 1938 New York involves rescuing a unicorn that has been enchanted. Where do you suppose they end up?

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William Kentridge: Lecture, Exhibition, Opera

February 8, 2010 in Art, Events, Exhibitions, Music by Cyrus | No comments

The NYU Dept of Comparative Literature, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and NYU Dept of Media, Culture & Communication are pleased to present a public lecture by internationally renowned South African artist William Kentridge tomorrow night, February 9th at 8 p.m. at Cooper Union’s Great Hall (7 E. 7th Street at Bowery). The talk is free and open to the public. Photo ID is required for entry.

Kentridge’s talk “A Universal Archive … with Some Remarks on Black Holes” will explore visual memory, the need for dis-remembering, studies in the speed of light, and other topics and themes at the edges of the artist’s work.

William Kentridge is known for his stop-motion films of charcoal drawings as well as for works in etching, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts. An exhibition of three decades of Kentridge’s works will be at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (Feb. 24-May 17) later this year.

In March, Kentridge will direct a production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera House. The production features Paulo Szot, who won a Tony Award last year for his performance in South Pacific at Lincoln Center. (Click here to watch a video about the Met’s production featuring an interview with Kentridge.)

Jazz Loft Project

November 18, 2009 in Art, Music by Bryan | 2 comments

jazz loft.jpgHave you been listening to the Jazz Loft Project radio series airing this week on WNYC? If not, it’s not too late to catch up. Episode Three’s coming this afternoon. The whole thing is highly recommended.

Here’s an overview from the station’s site:

“Photographer W. Eugene Smith moved into a loft at 821 Sixth Avenue, in
the heart of New York’s Flower District, in 1957. The place had already
become a hangout for artists, writers and especially jazz musicians,
who rehearsed and jammed there. Among the visitors to the loft:
Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, Steve Swallow, Mose Allison,
Bob Brookmeyer and hundreds more, over a period of about 8 years.” (Read more here.)

Smith eventually recorded over 4,000 hours of life in the Jazz loft, from jam sessions to conversations to what happened to be playing on the radio or television. The tapes are an audio supplement to the 40,000 photos he took during the same period — or vice versa: maybe the photos supplement the audio tapes.

Either way, the series makes for a fascinating slice of New York’s arts scenes in the late 50s and early 60s. Sam Stephenson of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies discovered the tapes in an Arizona archive in the late 90s. No one had listened to them in the 20 years they’d been housed there. In addition to producing this radio series with WNYC’s Sara Fishko, Stephenson’s also written a book that’s due out next week, and the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts will host an exhibition of Smith’s photography.

Start listening here. Much more, including a blog, at the project’s home page.

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Pop-ups and take-downs on Eldridge Street

November 16, 2009 in Architecture, Art by Bryan | No comments

Thanks to Bowery Boogie for posting this today. It’s the life cycle of a single block on Eldridge, between Rivington and Stanton:



See a slower version here, which will also allow you to progress one year at a time or to click on individual buildings for more info.
The artist, a Seattle-based web designer and writer named Zac van Schouwen, explains the project’s origins:

Awhile back, I was trying to find out the history of a building
that my great-great-grandfather had lived in — an old five-story
tenement on Eldridge Street in Manhattan. With some help from
Christopher Gray’s guide to researching New York City buildings, I
discovered that the building had been erected in 1834, on the site of
an old house. It was demolished in the 1940s; its lot later held a
garage, then a housing project.

My mystery was solved, but the project had piqued my interest
anyway. I decided to try a more mammoth task, compiling a complete
record of the life cycle of a single city block. That’s what I’ve
presented here. Beginning in the 1780s with James Delancey’s farm, and
ending with the present public housing structures, erected in 1985,
this is a record of eight generations of buildings on two-thirds of an
acre. (There is a brief gap from about 1802 to 1808, during which I’ve
made educated guesses as to the state of construction.)

Clicking on any building here will give you more details about its
history. The tenement that sparked this interest, #218, is a good place
to start. My great-great-grandfather lived there in 1860. Keep an eye
on it in 1922. Enjoy!

My favorite part is the fire-escapes that pop up in the early twentieth century. 1978 is the saddest year of all.

Abecedarium:NYC

September 8, 2009 in Art, Odds and Ends by Bryan | No comments

AHNY friend and former Writing New York TA Spence Keralis passes on a link to a wonderful, continuously expanding site sponsored in part by New York Public Library: Abecedarium:NYC.

The project’s blog describes the site this way:

Abecedarium:NYC
is an interactive online exhibition that reflects on the history,
geography, and culture — both above and below ground — of New York City
through 26 unusual words. Using original video, animation, photography
and sound, Abecedarium:NYC constructs
visual relationships between these select words and specific locations
in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.

Each word — whether it’s A for audile or Z for zenana – leads to a different short video and a location in the city that you may never have experienced before. In selenography (the study of the moon), amateur astronomers celebrate the wonders of the night sky at Staten Island’s Great Kills State Park. In open city (a metropolis without defense), the ruins of military installations throughout the five boroughs decay with time. Chatty teenagers in a Flushing, Queens cafe drink bubble tea in xenogenesis (the phenomenon of children markedly different from their parents). In diglot
(a bilingual person), a Chinese accountant, Albanian baker, Palestinian
falafel maker, Argentine film archivist and Cuban cigar maker speak
candidly about their daily routines. In mofette (an opening in the earth from which carbon monoxide escapes) mysterious gases flow from gaps in the streets of Manhattan.

The experience of visiting Abecedarium:NYC
is more than watching, listening and learning. Visitors to the project
are invited to respond to existing content as well as to share their
own experience of New York City by contributing original videos,
soundscapes, photos or texts to the project blog. As more users
contribute, the project grows in size, scope and experience, and
transforms into a destination for sharing and learning about every
facet of the city.

The blog itself is a little odd: if you want to see posts in chronological order, you’ll have to search under the “dates” tab at the head of the welcome page. The whole thing seems designed to lead you down the path of hours spent exploring.

The perfect site for people who love words as much as they love New York.

Howl! Fest 09(!)

September 6, 2009 in Art, Events by Bryan | No comments

howl.JPG

Grieve has some pictures up — including the one above — of the Howl! Fest’s kickoff arts event at Tompkins Square Park.

Complete schedule of events for the festival can be found here.

Info on volunteering can be found here.

Mocha Dick in Felt

August 28, 2009 in Art by Cyrus | 3 comments

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Tristin Lowe’s Mocha Dick at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. [Photo: New York Times]

Tristin Lowe’s life-sized sculpture Mocha Dick, executed in industrial felt covering a specially designed balloon, is tribute to the whale that served as one of the inspirations for Melville’s Moby-Dick. You’ll have to travel south of New York to Philadelphia to see it, though: it’s on view at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, which is devoted to “creating and exhibiting new work in new materials and new media in
collaboration with emerging and established international artists.” 

The whale Mocha Dick terrorized sailors in the waters near Mocha Island off the coast of southern Chile in the early nineteenth century, and he was, according to legend, almost entirely white. You can read first-hand accounts of the whale in a piece by the explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds
entitled “Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a
Manuscript Journal” and published in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine. Reynolds notes one unusual feature of this particular sperm whale:

Viewed from a distance,
the practised eye of the sailor only could decide, that the
moving mass, which constituted this enormous animal, was not a
white cloud sailing along the horizon. On the spermaceti whale,
barnacles are rarely discovered; but upon the head of this
lusus naturae, they had clustered, until it became
absolutely rugged with the shells. In short, regard him as you
would, he was a most extraordinary fish; or, in the vernacular of
Nantucket, “a genuine old sog”, of the first water.

The barnacles feature prominently in Lowe’s depiction of the whale. According to The Artblog, “Terraced scars are carved into the felt, and zig-zag in stitches across
the body. Beautiful barnacles are appliqued, flowering across the old
survivor’s skin in colonies.  In Melville and in Lowe, it is man’s
nemesis, man’s alter-ego, and the engine of man’s greatest folly.” [You can read their full account of the sculpture here.]

lowebarnacles.jpg

Mocha Dick, detail. [Photo from The Artsblog]

The entry devoted to Reynold’s account at melville.org reminds us of Herman Beaver’s theory of how “Mocha Dick” became “Moby Dick”:

“By July 1846 even the Knickerbocker Magazine had
forgotten its earlier version [of Reynold's article], reminding
its readers of ‘the sketch of “Mocha Dick, of the
Pacific”, published in the Knickerbocker many years
ago…’. That account may well have led Melville to look up the
earlier issue, in the very month he rediscovered his lost buddy
of the Acushnet and fellow deserter on the Marquesas,
Richard Tobias Greene, and began ‘The Story of Toby’ [the sequel
to Typee]. May not ‘Toby Dick’ then have elided with
‘Mocha Dick’ to form that one euphonious compound, ‘Moby Dick’?”

If you’re interested in venturing down to Philly to see Mocha Dick, take a look at this recent New York Times article, which discusses a variety of exhibitions currently on view in the city.

Maria Levitsky: Building Photographs

May 21, 2009 in Art by Bryan | No comments

marialevitskythunderbolt.jpgVia WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: One of my favorite freeform DJs, Maria, has a show of architectural photos opening tonight in Manhattan:

Deborah Berke & Partners Architects LLP

Maria Levitsky
Building Photographs

Opening Thursday May 21, 6:30-8:30pm
220 5th Avenue, 7th floor
New York, NY
212 229 9211

Open all summer 2009 by appointment

In her artist’s statement she relates her craft, in a way, to the work of historic preservation:

It is this evidence of disappearance that I desire to record in my
photographs. I look to create images that incite the imagination to ask
the question what could have happened here? and who left these traces?
The photograph itself becomes a trace as the scene continues to change
in time, as many of the locations are demolished or redesigned.

I’d like to think that she conceptualizes recorded sound in similar ways. Among other audio treasures, Maria introduced me to the bass player Henri Texier: I remember very clearly the first time I heard him on her show. (It was one of those moments you drop what you’re doing and call the station to see what’s playing.) I’ll forever be grateful — and can’t wait to see what visual treasures she’s captured in her exhibit. If you want to listen to her radio shows online, click here.

The 2001 photo shown above, left, is of the now-demolished Thunderbolt roller coaster at Coney Island. At the website linked you’ll find historical nuggets like this: “In the “American Experience”
documentary Coney
Island: A Documentary Film, Mae Timpano described
her years living under and working at the Thunderbolt, ‘We used to find teeth in the yard. We used to find wigs, glasses, guns. Everything we found in the yard … nobody came back for them, though.’”

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Friday Upper- and Outer-borough Blogging

April 3, 2009 in Art, Events, Neighborhood Scenes by Bryan | No comments

118flightmural.jpgOn public art in Queens: An excerpt from Public Art New York, by architect Jean Parker Phifer and photographer Francis Dzikowski [Newyorkology]

Coke with that slice? DEA busts drug-dealing pizza parlor in the Bronx. [Animal]

A guide to Boerum Hill [Lost City]

Images of America publishes new volume on St. George, Staten Island. Plus: “town” or “neighborhood”? [Walking Is Transportation]

The making of Manhattanville: What will be lost when Columbia expands? [Manhattanville.net, via an older post on JVNY]

Bonus: From my own back yard — if you haven’t seen Jon Kessler’s amazing installation “Kessler’s Circus” at Deitch Projects (76 Grand Street) you’ve only got through tomorrow. Here’s an older VBS.TV documentary series on Kessler, set in his long-time Williamsburg studio, that should give you a feel for the work.

Image from Newyorkology:

Flight
James Brooks, Artist, 1938-40
Collection of the City of New York
Marine Air Terminal
Delano & Aldrich, Architects, 1937-40; Restoration by Beyer Blinder Belle, Architects, 1995-6
West end of LaGuardia Airport, Flushing

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WNY Whitman

February 18, 2009 in Art, Teaching by Cyrus | 1 comment

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The subject of my lecture this morning in our Writing New York class is “Walt Whitman: High and Low.” I’ll try to tell two intersecting stories about Whitman and U.S. literary history. The first is the “high” story about his engagement with New England Transcendentalism and, particularly, the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The “low” story concerns Whitman the man of Brooklyn and New York, who works for the penny press, draws on sensationalist writing, and is inspired rather than revulsed by the influx of immigrants into the city. Along the way, I’ll give a quick tour of poetic forms, from Barlow to Bryant, to try to get across just why Whitman’s poetry looked so different to his contemporaries that some of them (most famously Whittier) refused to think of it as poetry.

The lecture makes use of clips from Ric Burns’s film New York: A Documentary History, which does a marvelous job of offering both insightful commentary (including choice words from Allen Ginsberg) and wonderful period images.

We read Whitman’s poetry in the light of Tom Bender’s essay “New York as a Center of Difference,” presenting Whitman as a cosmopolitan thinker who embraces difference in a variety of different forms. Near the close of the lecture, we’ll listen to what is thought to be the one recording of Whitman reciting that survives, a 36-second wax cylinder recording of the poem “America,” published in the New York Herald in 1888:

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, 

[The last two lines, not in this recording, are: 
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.]

You can listen to the recording here at whitmanarchive.org.

And we’ll close by thinking of Whitman as a realist, an inspiration to the painter Thomas Eakins. This gives me an excuse to talk about the French Realist painter Gustave Courbet (that’s “Realist” with a capital R) and to show his painting The Origin of the World (1866), currently on view at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris:

courbet_origin.jpg
I’ll suggest that Courbet’s painting is analogous to Whitman’s poetry in terms of its shock value, using Le Printemps, painted by the “academic” artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau in the same year as Origin to offer a contrast:

bougereau_printemps.jpg
This, by the way, is probably the painting that Edith Wharton was thinking of in The Age of Innocence, when she described the scandalous painting by Bougereau that Julius Beaufort has the “audacity” to hang in plain sight for his guests to see. But I’m getting ahead of myself …

[The photograph of Whitman above was taken in 1888 or so and served as the frontispiece for November Boughs. It and other images can be found at the whitmanarchive.org.]

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