Gatz takes new approach to form as old as the Parthenon

Sometimes it's good to be humbled by the reminder that no matter how creative we are, what we're creating isn't art, even if it's anointed by discerning Google Labs curators. But art can be key to rejiggering our brains when we're striving for creative that hasn't been done before.

Last night, I saw Gatz at the Public Theater, a production by the unassumingly-named Elevator Repair Service company. It's a transforming, truly mind-blowing experience, though its outright description might give you pause. It's a 6 hour stage production in which the only dialogue is the reading word-for-word of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. What makes the play genius is-- it's not a retelling of the classic, it's an enactment of it.

The setting is an office as dated and shabby as Dunder Mifflin. A worker wanders in, sits down at his desk, turns on his vintage hulk of a computer. It won't work. And suddenly, he doesn't know what to do with himself. In the clutter on his desk, he finds an old copy of The Great Gatsby. Out of boredom, he starts to read it aloud. At first, his coworkers hardly notice, then as time and pages go by, they do notice and are transformed by and into the characters, delivering lines while seemingly going about their business. (What business that is, is happily never made clear.)

The experience resonates on many levels--it's the soothing enjoyment of being read to, combined with the drama of talented actors bringing to life text on a stage, combined with entertainment of improv--the props actors use are office objects at hand, which adds to the ingenuity of the production. "Daisy" brushes her hair with a burnisher, Tom's lover's dog is an old ragdoll--no attempt is made to produce objects that align with book references. The setting is a character in itself, a screamingly pre-millennial showcase of artifacts from our recent, yet almost forgotten workplace past: enormous green-screen monitors, calculators, motivational posters including a guide to secretarial posture.



The play's title comes from Gatsby's "real" name which was James Gatz, the reading employee (and we) discover on page six. A ticket buys you about 6 hours of performance, mercifully (for all concerned) interrupted by a dinner break and two short intermissions. (The show is sold out, but there are wait lists.) The entire experience lasts about 8 hours, the most rewarding day you'll ever spend at an office.

It's a great reminder that old media can be new again, even a form that's been around since the Parthenon.

and, greetings from nuclear winter

Until now, the strangest thing I've seen in a snowglobe was a producer who spent 3 days in an inflatable one last December as a PR stunt for his agency, McKinney in Durham, NC. (Must have been some Christmas bonus they promised.) But though large as life, that sight was benign compared to these haunting miniatures, part of Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz's eerie Traveler series, available in limited edition snowglobes and C prints.




via Boing Boing

shirt sale at sotheby's--$6 million a swatch

Casual office dress too casual for your taste? Sotheby's offers a 7 ½ foot square (get it) painting of what looks like a close-up of a Brooks Brothers shirt to display in your workplace and subliminally remind slackers of what constitutes proper workplace attire. Auction in London, July 1. On view in NYC, May 10-14. Estimated sale price: $4-6 million.

via DKR via today's New York Sun

30 second art tour

We interrupt the crass and commmercial world of advertising to bring you a brief tour of of the world's most distinguished museums. First, these sightings at the Whitney Biennial:

Here is a kitty-litter box the size of a jacuzzi. It's filled with litter, thankfully unused. Like all real art it has a title: Inbox. Get it?



Going with the box theme, now we enter a boxy white room. It's empty but for a huge chandelier. See the awful paintings unframed on the wall? The paintings are meant to be awful. That makes them art! Ironic, isn't it? Those are almost the only paintings in the show.

Let's step over to this shack made of scrap-wood. It's just like shacks you see by old highways in the rural South. (Uber-urban curators love to *surprise us* by importing stuff from the real, un-rarified world.) Inside the shack, monitors show super-long videos of women with super-long (ankle-length) hair. Tending goats!

Let's hurry along to the room wallpapered in Whitney museum logos. Huge clay letters spell out Toothy Smile, Expresso and Focus Group. Why? Why not? Only hucksters will wonder why the chosen words don't include ties, pens, potholders and umbrellas which are for sale a few feet away in the museum store.



Here's an untitled photo of a sign at a funeral home. That'd make a nice blog post.





We've just enough time left to run up the street to the august Met to check out that Gustave Courbet retrospective. But what's this? An larger than life painting of, um, the business part of a spread-legged naked woman? What makes it world class art instead of high-class porn, is the title, of course: The Origin of the World. And, oh yes, the fancy frame. My, my. Look at the crowd. So many well-dressed middle-aged men stepping up for, uh, a closer look.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled program.