Atlanta GA: The Fox

It started as a Yaarab Shriner’s Temple (cornerstone, left), but went on to become a movie palace. For children of today, brought up in a world of screens, the idea of these Shangri Las are as fantastic as something out of the Grimm Brothers. The world is somewhere else, and most of these relics were lost or destroyed fifty years ago. The building itself was to be taken over by Southern Bell, and thrown down, but for the people of Atlanta who found a new calling to protect it, as if Sherman had reentered Atlanta.

A wonderful tour is to be had on off days in Atlanta. Compared to the King Foundation, which is free, this at $10 a head, will seem a ripoff, but in the end, I was happy to do it. Our Fox guide, unlike the wonderful tour guide who was a Park Ranger at the King birth house, was an unpaid volunteer. But she. too, was also just as wonderful. She seemed to have a love for the place, and the right kind of fascination, which made it that more interesting. We were there on a great day, so Kathy Griffin’s night performance did not stipulate we could not see the interior theater area, and the house lights were up full, so we could see everything.

She explained how the Shriner’s ran out of money with this venture, and how William Fox, from the original Fox movie studios (later 20th Century Fox) became interested in the structure. So we saw areas that the Shriners had planned as receptions rooms which had recently been refurbished. The theme had been sort of Moorish/Egyptian, which is not exactly the same thing.

The beauty in detail to this reception room involved Egyptian motifs repeated in column painting, a large rug design and light coverings,  similar to Egyptian friezes (above). The beauty of Moorish design in the exterior penthouse reception area, as well as details of the reception room (below).

The most elaborate theater where I lived had been an opera house first. It was done Italianate, with stucco and putti. But it’s bathrooms were housed within a lounge area, which permitted smoking. The Fox ladies lounge (four shots below) contained a sitting room, a toilet area, a phone booth area  and an actual powder room. While men smoked in their lounge area (three shots under), women had a separate door which led them out into a smoking area.

The lobby area is large compared to even large centroplex theaters, the lighting is soft, so I had to use a flash at point to pick up on the detail. In some ways one might think of this as the ultimate in bad taste, but this is a period which follows the Victorian, and figure, many of the designers on this and craftspeople came out of the period. Horror vacui, the fear of empty spaces. Yet the furnishing aren’t overstuffed horrors, but it is made up of the same mentality which one see at Ringling in the wagons of the circus, carousels, etc. Here,  it is still beautiful when kept at a minimum, with colors, more the ceiling designs, which do not jump out but keep a semblance of analogous and greyed hues. But that is for the actual viewer to decide. Contrast this with Wright, who was operating at the same time! Even Victorian in Oak Park, side by side, with Wright seems sedate to much of this.

The Auditorium  dwarfs anything we have seen before all of this. As said before, we were lucky to see it with the house lights up. What a fairy tale for an age before special effects. Twinkling tiny bulbs on the ceiling served as real stars. Under a canopy amid a make believe castle setting.

It is a Terrific thing Atlanta has done to perserve this old structure.

ForInformation about visiting the Fox:

http://www.foxtheatre.org/tours.aspx

For more information on the Movie Palace movement:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/palace/

Atlanta GA: Top Secret at the High Museum

“Cameras are welcome at the High Museum of Art, with some restrictions. Photography permits can be obtained from the security guard at the Front Desk. Still photography for personal use is permitted in the permanent collection galleries, but the Museum cannot authorize photography of works of art in special exhibition or on special loan to the museum. Photographs featuring art from the Museum’s permanent collection are not to be uploaded to the internet for use on online profiles, photo-sharing sites or personal web-pages.”

I would not even tell you the name of this artist for fear of breaking my privilege with the Museum! I only wish they didn’t keep this one behind glass so you can’t interact with it!

I would love to share with you some of the collection of the High, but unfortunately, I cannot. You see even worse than the Prado, the Rijksmuseum, the van Gogh Museum, the Gardiner, the High Museum has an even more outrageous policy: you can photo it, but not show it. My students will at least be able to share, although only on paper. I cannot use any of this in a video!!!

Although they have a Kara Walker shadow piece, this is not one of them (left). It is interesting how they have managed to blend in the (post-?) Modern structure of the thoughtful housing by Richard Meier with a lot of Neoclassical sculptures. This is very hard to do and the use of white or near white wall with the large open spaces which lends available light is quite beautiful. The marble of pieces like this take on a different light and tone. The wonderful Capitolini in Rome takes on the same idea, but does it differently with cream colored walls in interior hallways. Here use of glass blocks or even areas which show more open hallways from behind, give the sculpture not only a different look, but a different scale. The housing is wonderful, and I guess that I can show here.

There is a wonderful, monochromatic Chuck Close Self Portrait (2002) which I wish I could show in situ here, for it is a wonderful echo of the structure itself when the painting is turned sideways! Nor could I identify the Borremans from the Wesselman, which work beautifully in the modern floor. The shot below is early 20th century is actually Robert Henri under the Kara Walker cover.

I wonder with all this wonderful space and beautiful opening, why the lousy support column is sitting in the room, rather than be behind a wall, or made more convincingly part of the structure. It is almost as odd as the lousy sink fixtures which spit water all over the place. I thought, did  Meier really want these in?

In Amsterdam, last year, I got in an argument with the poor ticket seller, when I told her, I did not want to pay extra to see the special exhibit of van Gogh, which I had already seen earlier at the MoMA.  The van Gogh Museum charged me anyway, unlike the MoMA does. The MoMA keeps special exhibits that are extra admission housed separately. Other museums should do the same. I love these things, some big sponsor, say AT&T or Xerox or IBM, underwrite these things, and then the museum charges you extra for it. Does the big company that underwrote these things also get a cut?

The High did not pull  the same thing with the Dali exhibit. Dali is a great technician, but unfortunately had absolutely nothing to say. I have seen his work all over, including the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida (now in the new housing, admission $17–ouch! instead of the old $5 as it was about 7 years ago!).  A much better exhibit was the Dali collection of film done two years ago at the Modern (poster from subway, below), included in the price of   admission. While I came with a North American reciprocal pass, I still paid $27 dollars for 3, so I could not figure how I got a bargain. Although they do give you admission for a discounted rate one day. As of this writing, they also have a special program:

http://www.high.org/main.taf?p=4,3,1&eventtype=7

The High runs $18 and is a spit away from the MARTA, the Atlanta subway/train system. It has a wonderful Impressionist collection of earlier Monets, Sisleys, a good Bazille (we always forget him in the books), a snow scene by Pissaro. They have Cassatts, and some wonderful things to share, but I can’t, cause you know. . .

There are also those minor art pieces here, which add color to any museum, including furniture design and a few quilts from the 19th century in great condition. Again, a no show here.

So, if in Atlanta, get over to the High on a reduced day. You will see some interesting architecture, and uncover a decent Impressionist collection and some interesting contemporary pieces.

All that Jazz

I’m a sucka for musical films. But some are so bad, like that depressing thing, Pennies from Heaven that Herbert Ross did years ago. I don’t think Scorcese’s New York, New York was ever given serious consideration. It was interestingly like A Star is Born. I like Fosse’s All That Jazz, and wonder would he be alive, would Chicago, or even Dreamgirls, been done earlier?

I love the quick tracking in as the curtain opens, the closeup of Jim Broadbent with more eye makeup than Nicole Kidman and the blast of hot air. The entire piece truly is a blast of hot air. With the exception of the allusion to Bollywood, here, the whole piece is an art directors dream, and a couple of good editor’s cut. I believe I saw this in the movies, so the long shot might have seemed more effective, although I have seen that better done in other films. Moulin Rouge, has to be one of the worst movies ever made. It is as if someone opened the vaults of 20th Century Fox, and said rip off what you would like.

This is a movie in search of itself, and thankfully ends, never quite to be thought about. Kidman, generally a good actress, must have taken leave of her senses for this drivel, which might have flashed out of Fassbinder’s head and been immediately disposed of. Even Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy, another art director’s dream, had a semblance of a story to guide it along and introduced new musical material. It also had a better photographer. Moulin Rouge, unlike the original movie who in title only, this one rips off, is truly a lead balloon in search of more hot air.

You could write a book about Jennifer Hudson’s feet. They are that funny, they seem not to fit the sophisticated voice and face. They also costume her in a terrific suit and neckline for this one.  Yet those feet, even in flats. The other Jennifer, Holliday, the original Effie White should have looked this good! Watch her on youtube in that awful cheezy pink get-up. Back in the early 80s, I had read about her performance in Newsweek, and she was the darling of Broadway, that season. But anyone who saw that Tony award video, knows that Holliday was just too “big” for the screen and she actually would scare anyone off with all those hysterics of her face. She is a far cry, from that pretty Jennifer Holliday who lost a 100 pounds and really is quite lovely. But I saw both Jennifers on a BET thing, and Holiday would blow anyone off the stage. Which is why the other Jennifer got the part and the Oscar in the first place.

Now watch Hudson’s feet and moves in Step into the Bad Side. That one, Eddie Murphy and Beyonce seem right at home. Is someone in Hollywood real dumb? There are a hundred parts they could create for a good looking, great figure girl, like Beyonce. She is such a natural with Murphy in this number. In fact, the entire cast–Murphy, Hudson, Beyonce, Anika Noni Rose, Foxx, Hinton Battle–what material to make a dozen movies with!

Notice how the girls enter the stage compared to Kidman. The use of spatial is extraordinary with the cuts behind and in front of the supposed audience. An art director, does not a storyboard artist make! Look at the use of red from the beginning of the sequence when we see it behind Foxx, and then later with the entrance of the girls, where it is splashed all over a rather neutral set. The lighting used in the Kidman number, flattens the scene, rather than accentuates space. Much different from the wonderful somber browns in Hudson’s number previously cited. One must note that both Dreamgirls and Chicago are based upon established books, and musical material which was worth its weight in gold long ago.

It was fun to get the non-English youtube versions of both Stepping to the Bad Side and All That Jazz. The second depends on the beauty of establishing two different scenarios which run parallel. Moulin Rouge tries that and it goes flat.

Catherine Zeta Jones is terrific as the main character of the scene. The use of cutting, regrouping, musical lead in, color and camera placement and movement, are quite intelligent and dynamic. Watch Jones feet making an entrance, just as Renée Zellweger’s feet and stockings tell us reams about her character in bed in the same scene.

There is a wonderful shot at the end of the song, where Jones mugs and the reaction shot is a slight zoom into the emerging face of the arresting detective who himself has the same expression. Wonderful small details as these, make us aware of traditions in film (as in Hitchcock) where detail resonates idea and substance.

A New Year: Getting a spirit on. . .

Kind of strange how things work out. It’s been a little cold the past few days. In fact it is a season of cold, except for the kids.

My school I classify as industrial. We have over 1300 students, and about 74 classroom teachers. I have worked in both middle schools and a high school with about the same or a few more. these schools seem warm by comparison.

An industrial school lets kindergartners sit out in the cold, because teachers have to have their planning in their rooms, and there isn’t enough staff to watch them. An industrial school, has no paraprofessionals (i.e.-teacher’s aids) because they are poorly funded, so the kids don’t have enough adults to watch them during lunch, so teachers work in teams. One stays with two classes and as they eat lunch, while the other teacher eats lunch. Then during recess, the one that ate stays with the two classes, while the other eats. –Neat, huh?

Performing arts don’t exist in an industrial school, unless all of special area gives up their own time to support it. Teachers are too busy testing, or instructing for testing. Since Race to the Top* hit town, we are “data” driven. It would make Skinner proud. I don’t know how much more “right” the pendulum will swing. The Neo-behaviorists are alive and well. The county mandates instructional time and everything is based upon benchmarks provided by the state. Science has made a slight reemergence, only because we test for it. Social studies, the dreaded “Progressive” subject, devised by Dewey is just more of a report card grade. It is taught by younger teachers, whose grasp on the global is just a notch more, since they were also poor recipients of geography and history programs. God forbid, anyone should know where anything outside the U.S. is. And history, well we know from Lynn Cheney, that peach, has been taught by a bunch of commies since Roosevelt came into office. Probably, Teddy.

The right wing, when it couldn’t turn back the clock of civil rights desegregation, instead muscled in on education. If you can’t use it, abuse it. The Gablers rolled into town in Kanawha County with their creationist drivel and anti-communism. Next the right went after holistic reading programs and took over school boards. They embraced Nation at Risk, like it was the holy bible. By now they are after unions and dumping anything that cannot be measured. Except money, which there is never enough of, and seems to dwindle in the face of paying textbook companies and testing institutions $$$, as instructional time dwindles in the face of testing time. Parents should ask teachers, principals and school board member exactly how much time a child spend each year on standardized or norm referenced testing, instead of getting actual instruction?

Ever go to a school board meeting? More pandering than pimps on the street. If you weren’t going to retch before you went, you surely will after. But not in my county, as we say, One Vision/One Voice. –Dun’nit sound like something right out of a Leni Refenstahl movie?

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*Race to the Top, is brought to you by Barack Obama, who ran as a supposed antiwar/tax-the rich-commie type. As a big supporter of merit pay, he appears to be more in lockstep with the typical Right Wing anti-union drivel, than usual.

Oh, look it’s Barack and the Republicans! Pseudo-fighting out the tax thing, while diverting the fact that thousands of U.S. troops sweat or freeze their behinds off in some far off land, instead of being at home with their families this Christmas.

On things you should have done: My blog is filled with photos, almost all of which I have shot. There are a few exceptions. This one of Punch and Judy came off a blog by a young Englishwoman who did puppets. I went back recently to give her credit and could not fing the blog. But found dozens using this image. I blogged and found a news agency of sorts using it, so I will put credit there (maybe) if they are the source.

http://acrosstheuniverse.forumotion.com/t2739-punch-and-judy

I wish I could find the young lady who first posted it. It is not my photo, but has even made it on facebook.

Postcards/NYC: Streets

Vendor half block from MoMA.

The fun of NYC is the streets. It always has been. No show is better, with an endless procession in movement. The funny, the pitiful, the unique sit side by side, or collide in an endless cavalcade. You don’t need money to enjoy the city, but being cognizant helps!

Penny posed herself dreaming by the street Liberty in front of tourist shop. Latest unclothed poster male along Fifth, not exactly a six pack.

Can you imagine wearing this? I could just imagine giving this Cartier as a gift, right?

Restaurants are always a trip, but in the mid-50s on Fifth, you got to figure the real beauty are some of the window displays and a lot of the architecture.

Interestingly enough, I had not been in St. Patrick’s in years, as I do not like to gawk in American churches. What is odd is how austere and cold, it is. It reminded me of those Anglican churches I had been to when I took a course at Cambridge years ago. They had eliminated the saints, but the niches were all still intact!

Everything is orderly and superclean, but a wedding was going on and it seemed without much sentiment. I thought, how sad, this is such an important moment in this couple’s life and here we are just gawking around. I didn’t even see much family or friends, although you could have had half the city and it still wouldn’t fill the hall! It is the reverse of the subway.

There is something awful for people who come to any city and don’t get caught up with it’s rhythm, NYC has so many of them, and some even more wonderful than others.

Check out the gallery: SUBWAY

A New Year: Happy First Week back

“Had to be strong
So I believed
And now I know I’ve succeeded
In finding the place I conceived” -Ben Margulies and  Mariah Carey

Oh, to see that beautiful, petite, pretty Mariah Carey, look like the perfect 20 year old. I heard this song in a store today, and it felt the way I felt this week.

Howz your day, someone asked Friday, after the week off for Thanksgiving. Three classes of drawing; one making playdough with Kindergarten; quilts and firing clay with first; and papier-mâché with second. When I can do that in one day, man, am I happy.

Our weekly faculty meetings disappeared into dust, just as the ugliness got underway when the voting for FCAT moneys came up. Everyone has to vote on how the 97K bonus for coming in an “A” is divided up in the school. Usually bucks go to different causes, one grade level got so crummy this year, we had all kind of chit going on. Somebody didn’t want administration to get a cent, this was rejected by the School Advisory Committee, who said, if the custodians get $250, why don’t you give something to the principal and two assistant principals.

The Nurse’s fund got nothing. We have a nurse that the school pays for, the county pays for nothing. We constantly have to knock on the door of the PTA, or else we couldn’t figure who is going to give the diabetic Kindergartners their shots, or who will show us how to give the asthmatics the EpiPen. Crumbs. This must be part of that “site-based” management. The one where the principal gets $100, and has to figure how to hold on to three more teachers, a custodian and a clerk to answer the phones. Don’t worry Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet, or Rick Scott or Barack Obama will figure out something with merit pay, and we can stretch that amount about 50 cent more.

Our wonderful science teacher, Carol, called in the snake trainer for Math and Science Night. We could have used him to charm the snakes during determination of  FCAT moneys.

Nancy Sell sent this out over weekend on facebook:

“Change your profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood and
invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday, December 6th, there
should be no human faces on facebook, but an invasion of memories. This
is a campaign to stop violence against children.”

Eloy Torrez, the West Coast muralist/painter, was another, aside from Nancy who did this (he was Grumpy, I think). I chose Tom Terrific from the 1950s Territoons thing. I loved this as a kid. Anyway, by posting today, we were only about 5 strong. I thought that was a sad commentary about violence against children.

Janene sent me this link, and it some interesting uses of illustration by use of collage.

http://www.sagworks.com/

I felt so accomplished this week. Three of my kids in Art Club went County in the Reflections PTA thing. I am up to date on lesson plans, and even have a handle on grading. It all sound so good–now when does the friggin’ house fall on me?

A New Year: After NYC

A long weekend can help clear out your head, after a concentrated period. What better way than to see family and find your way into major museums? Then I wonder, no wonder I don’t get any hits on this thing!!!

I loved the above image coming back to Orlando: the sculpture covered in cobwebs at the baggage claim. There is still a love for Halloween here, one which even the religious right wing could not eradicate twenty years ago.

Before I left for NYC, I put together a piece on Käthe Kollwitz, the wonderful German draughtsman/printer. I believe she is truly one of the greatest draughtsman, along with Matisse and Picasso, and THE greatest draughtsman of the twentieth century in value. No one can hold a piece of compressed charcoal next to this woman. I am not one for putting in “unnecessary” feeling into artwork, it is either in there or not. It is not to be faked, but Kollwitz naturally reports images in a similar way that Arbus sometimes can, but with great compassion. It is her images that give a face to post-WWI Germany, where people literally starved to death. Unrealistic and vindictive reparations by the West, set the scenario for the fall of the Weimar government, as Nazis set up soup kitchens in failed towns gaining favor and future political capital.

No one see the insidious face of war like this woman. All National Geographic photographers melt away next to one image of this woman’s. And I notice that even the great worldly Sebastião Salgado, the reknowned Brazilian photographer, has learned from Kollwitz. It is no wonder the Nazis banned her from working. What heartbreak in her final years to resee war, through the horrors of World War II, and be able to do nothing. Cassandra revisited, with the same results.

Originally, I wanted to use music by Wagner, but I had heard the wonderful soundtrack that Pabst had used for the Brecht/Weill Die 3-Groschen-Oper (Three Penny Opera) on you tube, and it worked well. Viva the 21st century, everyone becomes a filmmaker.

How we have failed over half a century after Kollwitz. No wonder our culture has such a fascination for the death and bloodlust. In what other decade could a popular television, Criminal Minds, dedicate itself primarily to serial killers—weekly!