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**WARNING: This post contains a very big photo of a man’s head**

Did you all see the sky last night, around 7:45? It was incredible - luminous, clear, and the air was at that perfect temperature where you forget that such a thing as temperatures exist. If New York weather were like this all the time we wouldn’t have any culture (insert joke about perfect climate of some city - you know the candidates - that we all secretly wished we lived in much of the year).

Thankfully, this weather has arrived at a time when there is, in relative terms, precious little to do around town, and when most of us, if we aren’t on vacation, have slipped into that dreamy, somewhat removed state known as “girding our loins in preparation for the madness that is the fall arts season in New York.” It’s a Quixotic effort to build up reserves of calm.

I’ve been reading Oscar Wilde’s “The Critic as Artist,” which, fittingly, opens “With Some Remarks Upon the Importance of Doing Nothing.” This should be required yearly reading for all New Yorkers (that phrase, at least). In fact, maybe it should be our book club pick - no, I haven’t forgotten. I’m just slow.

I’ve also been thinking about some of the art I’ve seen lately - being able to really reflect is a luxury that I don’t always have, especially if I’m reviewing every night. Truthfully, much of the work I encounter doesn’t engender an awful lot of reflecting; it’s not great, it’s not terrible, it’s just there, like a polite dinner guest whose name you keep forgetting.

This has been the case for most shows I’ve seen at the Fringe festival, this year and in past years. But it wasn’t true of “Zombie,” which I mentioned last week. Its run ends tonight at 7:15, and you should check it out if you have nothing to do, and want to be seriously disturbed:

And you wonder why he’s stuck in my head …

Bill Connington adapted this one-man show from Joyce Carol Oates’ novella about a sexual psychopath. Oates tends to annoy the hell out of me, but here her words were murderously good (though they do seem, at times, to be straying uncomfortable close to linking homosexual repression and pedophilia - made me a little squirmy). Connington’s adaptation and Thomas Caruso’s direction are old-fashioned in the best possible way: they don’t try to reinvent any wheels or be strange for strangeness’ sake. They’ve got powerful material, and they stay out of its way.

But thinking about the idea of solid, traditional theater made me think of one of the events that I’m most excited about for the fall, a highly opinionated festival that promises to offer a wholly experimental take on theater: “PRELUDE ‘08.” I’ll be writing more about this as we get closer to the September 24 start date, but just wanted to make sure it’s on everyone’s radar.

O.K. Go back to daydreaming - hope you can get this photo out of your head.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned the film “Man On Wire” in this post, wondering if Philippe Petit’s incredible 1974 wire-walking feat between the twin towers might be “the greatest outdoor performance in this city’s history”:

Naturally, one of my dear readers, Beg to Differ, not only dismissed my “greatest” thought, but the idea of it being art at all: “And what was all the fuss about? “Work of art”? Please.”

At that point, I hadn’t seen the movie, and wondered briefly whether I was overemphasizing (memory and its tricks) the importance of Petit’s act. But I’ve now seen the film, and feel even more strongly that this was no mere stunt, or manifestation of man’s need to conquer (which is the only, totally inadequate way in which I can try to understand the inexplicable madness that might lead a person to climb K2).

“The object of my dream doesn’t exist yet,” Petit says in the documentary, of his feeling, many years ago, upon hearing about plans to build the World Trade Center.

What better way to describe the drive to make art? Petit had no why, just a need to inhabit (and disrupt) the most uninhabitable of urban landscapes with an incredibly beautiful, and human, act. The art lay in his intent more than anywhere else.

I was talking about Petit with a friend, and she brought up “The Waterboard Thrill Ride” installation at Coney Island (you can listen to WNYC cultural reporter Siddhartha Mitter’s segment on it here.), wondering if I thought that it counted as art, or protest, or both. I haven’t been out to see it, so I thought I would ask all of you …

Finally … another friend reminded me that the twin towers had inspired other acts of artistic anarchy, and told me about “The B-Thing,” by the art group Gelitin, whose members somehow, early one fine morning in 2000, managed to suction out a window on one of the WTC’s highest floors, wrangle a narrow balcony out there and pose for the camera. You have to wonder if this “unbelievable, completely illegal, and fully secret stunt” owes its existence to Petit.

“Like most things in life, 90 percent of everything is crap. But 10 percent is really good. And the tickets are only $15.”

Can you guess what I’ve been doing with my week? That’s right, I’ve been trucking around the New York International Fringe Festival, undaunted by the monsoon-like rain storms we’ve been experiencing, but more than a little overwhelmed (or is it ‘under’?) by the offerings of what, before every show, the Fringe folks are sure to remind us is “the largest multi-arts festival in North America.”

The quote above is from a fellow Fringe-goer I interviewed after an afternoon show yesterday - you know, one of those matinées where, not counting the tech people, reporters, etc., there are about five people in the audience (I think I counted four in this one). His take on the festival as wildly uneven grab bag was offered in support of its mission but, while I’m in complete agreement with his analogy, the 90/10 balance speaks to what drives me crazy about events like the Fringe, which are long on eclecticism and short on curatorial or conceptual underpinnings.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some great plays to be seen (including “Zombie,” pictured below). But I’m not sure how well these sorts of festivals serve audience members, artists and even the art form itself.

Quentin P. (the scarily good Bill Connington) loves him some zombie

I’ll be on WNYC later today to talk about this very subject, and discuss some of the shows I’ve been seeing. I’ll include the link when it becomes available. Meanwhile, I would love to hear about your Fringe experiences, in New York or elsewhere, and why you agree with me, or think I’m completely missing the point.

The Miller Theater announced yesterday that its ebullient executive director, George Steel, is leaving. To become general director of the Dallas Opera.

Huh?

I must admit, this one left me scratching my head. Maybe he was drawn in by the chance to inaugurate a state-of-the-art facility (the opera moves to its new home in fall of ‘09). Maybe Dallas lured him with promises that he could have free rein to revitalize its programming. Maybe he’s just a Texas boy at heart.

“This is going to be a tremendous move for me – in every sense,” says Mr. Steel in the release. “I have family connections in Dallas as far back as the 19th century, so, coming to Dallas is something of a spiritual return. Yet in many ways, Dallas will be a ‘Brave New World.’ The challenge to build a 21st century opera company equal to its remarkable new venue proved impossible to resist – I can’t wait to begin.”

From budget sizes to artistic sensibilities, the two organizations are a study in opposites. The Miller is a great little theater that, under Steel’s leadership, has become a vibrant center for adventurous music - it’s kicking off its 20th season next month with a hugely ambitious production of Iannis Xenakis’ “Oresteia,” which Steel was instrumental in bringing about. Will he even be around to see it? He starts in Dallas on October 1. First up there? “The Marriage of Figaro.”

The Miller’s general manager, Melissa Smey, will serve as acting director while the theater searches for his replacement. Here’s hoping that person follows in Steel’s footsteps. He made the Miller a place worth being excited about, and his galvanizing presence will be missed.

Perhaps it was during one of the enragingly treacly segments in which an Olympian’s bond with his mother - a single mother, naturally - was celebrated, or an athlete’s life-long sacrifices detailed.

Maybe it was when Mary Carillo and Bob Costas used the synchronized opening ceremonies to hold forth on the national character of the Chinese.

Or it might have been any time spent with Costas - who, I’m convinced, the networks keep in a cryogenics tube in between major sporting events.

I’m not sure when, exactly this weekend, I lost my battle to take the Olympics seriously. But it didn’t take long.

I love sports, and I love it when disparate national cultures converge. But the self-important, simplistic, schmaltzy culture of the Olympics itself stinks.

I’m not talking about the actual events, which run the gamut from inane to thrilling but rarely offend (does anybody else think immediately of JonBenét Ramsey when those tarted up teenage girls begin their tumbling routines? “Women’s” gymnastics - who are they kidding??). I’m talking about the packaging of the Olympics. Most of us don’t ever see the Games live - I’ve heard it’s usually a pretty fabulous experience, if anyone who’s been wants to send in a report. We’re stuck with the TV version and, because few of us have in-depth knowledge of sports like, say, synchronized diving, the commentators play a far larger role in how we understand them. This would be unfortunate enough, without the endless, insipid biographical segments that invariably unfold and invariably bring out the absolute worst tendencies in sports journalists.

The pomp and circumstance, the insistence that this is Important because it’s the Olympics, the horrifically sentimental soundtrack, the “We Are the World” nonsense while furiously keeping track of who has the most medals, the absurd summations and analysis of different countries - I just don’t get it. It’s gross, and it does a terrible disservice to athletics and to culture.

I was flipping through channels to take a breather when I caught the latest episode of the enjoyably ridiculous show “Project Runway” (it’s the perfect antidote for the Games: the participants take themselves terribly seriously, while the show itself makes great sport of them).

Naturally, this episode revolved around the contestants having to create outfits for the opening ceremony at the Olympics. I tuned in in time to hear one of the designers, the 25-year-old Daniel Field, admit his utter ignorance of anything Olympic: “I’m guessing somebody holds a flame and runs around a track field.”

Needless to say, Daniel’s design didn’t score very high with the judges.

“I don’t know, she’s from the Republic of Cocktail Land?” the gaseous judge Michael Kors asked. “If your sport is drinking, it’s a good dress.”

Amen, Daniel: ignorance is bliss.

Yesterday was my first full day back in the city, and I celebrated with an hour-long walk through Brooklyn from my apartment to my brother’s studio. I’m a sucker for theatricality of all sorts, which makes long walks through New York irresistible to me - there’s a performance on every block, from made-for-opera screaming matches between couples to runway-worthy walks by teenage girls wearing entirely too little clothing. It’s a veritable feast, and that’s without taking into account all of the fabulous street performers making their living here.

I would love to hear about people’s favorite walking circuits - not the big touristy ones, but the side streets and unexpected pleasures - and any street performers who are must sees. The most magical performance experience I had this summer was probably the Movement Research parade through the village.

Of course, not all New York neighborhoods are worth walking through (insert Park Slope or Upper East Side joke here), so some other outdoors things you might do this weekend include:

Listening to Michael Pollan discuss “Taking the Plant’s Point of View” in the P.S.1 courtyard tonight. This is where I would be if I weren’t working elsewhere. If anyone goes, please let me know how it went, and especially if any cranky cannibals showed up to heckle him.

Swinging by the Prospect Park bandshell to catch this Celebrate Brooklyn concert honoring Bill Withers tomorrow night - or skip the organized stuff and go find the various drum circles and capoeira practitioners who inevitably find their way to the park.

Heading indoors for an hour and a half to see “Man on Wire,” the film account of what might just be the greatest outdoor performance in this city’s history. Not all memorable walks happen at street level.

Well, I finally saw “The Dark Knight.” I hadn’t planned to write about it, as I don’t have much to add beyond what others have been saying: that Christian Bale is a ho-hum Batman, that the supporting cast is lovely and, most importantly, that Heath Ledger is incandescent as the Joker. The character is terrible and terrifying, a psychopath who delights in chaos-inducing savagery. But Ledger’s performance is so beyond the movie’s perceived sense of itself, so obviously (yet subversively) Art, that it’s hard not to be joyful while watching this final performance. Furthermore, it’s clear, as Ledger said in this interview, that he was having a blast:

And those were my thoughts, not worth a post - until I came across David Denby’s review in the New Yorker, and across these lines in particular:

“At times, I was reminded of Marlon Brando at his most feline and insinuating. When Ledger wields a knife, he is thoroughly terrifying (do not, despite the PG-13 rating, bring the children), and, as you’re watching him, you can’t help wondering—in a response that admittedly lies outside film criticism—how badly he messed himself up in order to play the role this way. His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss.” (Italics mine)

I keep returning to two ideas in the italicized phrase. First, I am intrigued by Denby’s sense of his boundaries as a critic. That one little insert touches upon so many areas of interest: what role critics play, what the critic’s relationship is to other audience members, to what extent we want our critics to look at art differently than we do, to what extent it’s possible (let alone desirable) to block the world at large and the specific context in which a piece of art was created when critiquing that art …. I’ll be teaching a course on criticism at CW Post this semester, so these questions have been much on my mind of late. I’m most curious to hear what you all think.

The other idea within this excerpt is far more troubling. Denby writes, “you can’t help wondering—in a response that admittedly lies outside film criticism—how badly he messed himself up in order to play the role this way. His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss.”

Oh, really? Funny, I thought I was watching a young artist at the height of his powers, fully in control of his art and delighting in his abilities (sadly, now, we’ll never know if he had higher heights within him - I suspect he had).

And I thought Ledger’s final act was an accidental drug overdose - to link this wretched end with his triumphant art does him a grave insult, and to mistake ability and skill with “heroism” is to lessen his life’s work, and infantilize him. It plays into that old canard - the stupidly romantic notion that great artists are tortured creatures, undone or driven to madness by their art. When other professionals achieve glory, we seem able to appreciate their accomplishments without such editorializing - why do we treat our artists so differently?

What have you all been seeing? Doing? Hearing? Running into on the street? Falling in love with or being horrified over having spent time and money on - o.k., that’s not really grammatical, I guess, but you’ll have to forgive: I’m going through a bit of NYC withdrawal up here in Maine:

(yes, this is really the view)

Trees and oceans are nice and all, but I am coming, more and more, to agree with this famous quip by the eternally fabulous Frank O’Hara (who, I’ve unilaterally decided, should be the patron saint of this blog, unless anyone out there disagrees and we need to have a Patron Saint Vote - the Culturist is now accepting nominations and there might be prizes): “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy.”

So … help a girl out and tell me what you’ve been seeing. Or go check out this talk tomorrow by the French scholar Annie Cohen-Solal at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. She’s writing a book on Leo Castelli and “will discuss the evolving sociology of the artist/gallery/collector system.” I wonder what Castelli would make of the current art world scene …

Or … if you missed the last Obamaerobics class, there is one tomorrow at 8 p.m., and another on the 19th at Teatro La Tea.

Or… go see “Arias with a Twist” at the consistently impressive little space HERE. Joey Arias meets Basil Twist - how can this miss? I wasn’t able to see it in the mad weeks before my vacation, and am planning to see the extended run when I get back - would love to hear from anyone who has seen it.

Or, maybe, you would rather stay in and read two very different posts about blogging: This from Gawker and this from the Guardian. Thanks, J, for pointing them out.

Whatever you do, please report back. Or I’ll be forced to watch yet another hour of “Law & Order.”

And you thought my very first post about this being a collective blog was all just claptrap…

One of the best parts about living in New York is leaving it, and artists value their summer getaways just as much as everyone else.

Members of the Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group working on a new piece, “3 Dancers, 4 Chairs, 26 Words” during a June residency at Mount Tremper Arts. Photo by Mathew Pokoik.

While some people might spend these vacations lolling about on their parents’ couch, watching endless episodes of “Law & Order” and “Project Runway” and trying desperately to finish Proust, many artists opt, happily, for working vacations. As Carolyn Brown wrote in her wonderful memoir, “Chance and Circumstance,” of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s stint at Black Mountain College’s last Summer Institute of the Arts, in 1953:

“For us, Black Mountain was a kind of paradise: the paradise of being able to be dancers twenty-four hours a day, freed from the dreary little jobs most of us needed to pay the rent and grocery bills, freed from the hassles of scheduling rehearsals to accommodate the peculiar hours of seven or more people’s dreary little jobs, and freed, too, from hours wasted on subways and buses shuttling back and forth to classes, rehearsals, jobs, coldwater flats, and unheated lofts. At Black Mountain we walked dirt roads, breathed clean air, heard birds at dawn. We were fed good plain fare from the college’s farm, were housed in comfortable, rustic simplicity, and were surrounded by artists and students of other disciplines equally free to do nothing else but their work.”

(Excerpted from “Chance and Circumstance” by Carolyn Brown Copyright © 2007 by Carolyn Brown. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.)

And, of course, artists also go back to their roots for creative sustenance; New York ain’t called a melting pot for nothing, and many “New York artists” are mining rich veins of inspiration that originate in far-flung parts of the world.

Don Voisine is a painter who has lived and worked in New York for years. He is the president of the American Abstract Artists, and his elegant, architectural works, with their unruffled surfaces and spatially expansive depths, are worlds unto themselves:

“Delayed Green” by Don Voisine; oil on wood panel, 32″ X 63″ 2007

But I was struck, upon first seeing his paintings several years ago, by how much they reminded me of the Maine landscape where I grew up, which is marked by dark, sometimes oppressive masses of pine and fir trees. These forests give way to bleak expanses of sky and snow in the winter, and to green fields and bursts of color in the other seasons. This is particularly true in the northern reaches of the state, which is full of potato fields and far from the Atlantic Ocean. So it made complete sense to learn that Don grew up in Fort Kent - he didn’t see the ocean until he was 16.

“Delayed Green,” along with other recent works of his, is on view through August 9 at the Icon Contemporary Art gallery in Brunswick, Maine, and I wonder how many people who see the show up there will see the same landscapes I always do, hiding in luxurious abstraction.

Hey everyone …

Please forgive your faithful Culturist if she’s a bit slow in responding over the next week. I’m up in Maine, and I’m doing all of this from a DIAL-UP connection. So be kind. And rest assured that I’ll be back.

The same could not be said when Cathy Edwards, the much-loved artistic director of Dance Theater Workshop, relocated to New Haven two years ago to take on the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. While DTW lucked out in hiring the incomparable Carla Peterson as Edwards’ replacement, at the time it felt like a cruel blow to a city where inspired curators often seem all too rare. Too, Edwards’ departure came amid great turnover in several of the city’s storied downtown houses: just two years earlier, Debra Singer had become the new executive director and chief curator at The Kitchen, and Vallejo Gantner had replaced the beloved Mark Russell at P.S. 122.

Now, Edwards is following Russell again - but not in departing. On Monday, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art announced that Edwards has come on board as the Guest Artistic Director for the 2009 and 2010 Time-Based Art (TBA) Festivals. But don’t panic, New Haven, she will remain with the A&I festival.

They don’t make many like Cathy Edwards…

Russell was PICA’s guest director from 2006 until this year, following the founding artistic director Kristy Edmunds (1995-2005). Edwards’ tenure begins after this year’s TBA Festival ( September 4-14). So … while it’s too bad that New York had to lose a gem like Edwards, it’s great that she’s getting to influence festivals as diverse as TBA and Arts & Ideas. I’m excited to see what she’ll do.

Curators like Edwards create a context in which experimental becomes the norm - it’s always amazing to me to think how close an institution like the Joyce Theater and DTW are physically (both are on 19th street, less than a block away), yet how far apart they are in terms of programming choices. While DTW is always pushing the envelope, the Joyce tends to go for safe everytime. The big houses in particular are guilty of playing it safe -we’ve all sat through Next Wave festival presentations at BAM that feel more like “Last Decade,” for example, which is why it’s so exciting that an iconoclast like Gerard Mortier is taking over at City Opera. Presumably, he’ll shake things up just as Peter Gelb is making waves at the Met.

Of course, houses need to fill seats, and the bigger the house, the more seats to fill - as you go up the scale, ticket sales play an increasingly big role in operating budgets, meaning that a small house like DTW has a luxury the Joyce/BAM/LC don’t. But curators can’t just go for what’s popular, or they shouldn’t - it’s the difference between being a politician with one eye on the polls, and being a leader. It’s up to curators, in large part (along with critics and artists, of course), to educate their audiences, to say, “hey, this thing that looks so strange, that isn’t what you think of as dance/theater/painting/opera - well, look again, look harder, because it is.” Otherwise, it’s awfully difficult for an art form to move forward.

I’m interested to hear from any and all about the state of curators in New York. Are folks happy with this city’s cultural gate keepers? Please sound off - feel free to make sweeping, absurd generalizations, or comment very specifically about a particular art form or even an institution. The Culturist is all ears. Well, until my dial-up farts out again.