Upcoming:
ART CRITICISM The newly formed MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department at the School of Visual Arts has just launched an ambitious series of talks by distinguished art critics—entitled “The Critics Series”—and a related program celebrates the publication of works by four faculty members. A book signing at SVA’s Westside Gallery features recent titles from Suzanne Anker, Tom Huhn, Thomas McEvilley, chair, MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, and Raphel Rubinstein—all of whom will be on hand to discuss. The featured publications touch on topics from the state of art criticism to such social issues as cloning and eugenics. Aside from a lively snapshot of contemporary art criticism, the event offers the opportunity to hear from those training the next generation of art critics about what makes them tick. Thu., Feb. 2 6 p.m., 141 W. 21st St.. Free and open to the public. 212.592.2010.
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Recently Noted:
DIARY OF A DRAG QUEEN “I have never wanted to be a woman…” So begins Daniel Harris’s paradoxical memoir “Diary of a Drag Queen,” a witty, satisfying examination of gender and loneliness in the contemporary age. After his partner left him at the age of 45, Harris lights upon the idea that as a drag queen named “Denial” he might occasionally have success enticing an attractive man into his bed. (Stefen Styrsky)
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FAITH FOR BEGINNERS Travel can be a life-affirming experience, but not if your trip is a forced march. In Aaron Hamburger’s debut novel, Mrs. Michaelson has dragged her husband and son to Israel hoping her Detroit suburb’s Millennium pilgrimage will be inspiration for them both. Her husband is dying slowly of cancer, and her son Jeremy, an NYU student, recently placed either a suicide attempt or an accidental overdose under his belt, depending on whom you ask. Hamburger uses humor and insight to get to the heart of Mrs. Michaelson and son Jeremy as he follows them through a variety of tribulations. (Seth J. Bookey)
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FRANCIS BACON’S STUDIO Several years after Francis Bacon’s death in 1992, the executor of his estate, John Edwards, donated the contents of the English painter’s studio to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, the artist’s birthplace. Bacon’s studio is legendary, a maelstrom of photos, paint supplies, liquor bottles, destroyed and half finished paintings, and other detritus from his practice. The Hugh Lane, utilizing a massive team of experts and archeologists, cataloged and moved the studio piece by piece (down to every paint tube cap) from London to Dublin and reconstructed the space for public view. The book is an impressive documentation of both the move and the contents of the studio itself. (Lorne Colon)
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GORE VIDAL’S AMERICA Dennis Altman’s new book is particularly welcome for its warts-and-all treatment of the great man’s life and work. Altman’s book is unique in being a critical assessment of Vidal by a writer who, like his subject, is left wing and homosexual, and who also has made major contributions to the literature on (homo)sexuality, sexual politics, and social change. (George De Stefano)
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LISTENING FOR THE OBOE “I think these sermons are for anybody who cares passionately about living a life of meaning in a world of despair,” commented Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum on her recently-published book of drashot, commemorating her first decade as senior rabbi of New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. The book compiles Kleinbaum’s and the congregation’s favorite sermons given by her between 1992 and 2003, in which she addresses issues as various as the impact of AIDS on the gay community in the early 1990s, the place of children in an LGBT synagogue, CBST’s solidarity with the African-American community on the subject of reparations, the challenges of negotiating the complicated space between democratic leadership and solid organizational structure, and the devastation of September 11, among other topics. (Eileen McDermott)
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PUCCINI WITHOUT EXCUSES If a gay author publishes a new book, even one not publicly known as gay, and even if the book has no gay content per se, it may be of interest to gay readers and marketed as such. This is the case with Will Berger, raconteur, operaphile, and even opera crusader extraordinaire who has embarked on an ambitious undertaking in attempting to render mainstream opera more user-friendly-most recently with“ Puccini Without Excuses.” (Larry Mass)
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Specimen Days Michael Cunningham’s novel is an experiment, and a challenge to what is considered “literary fiction,” but conventionally arranged—three novellas each revolving around a trio of New Yorkers. Presiding over each, endowing them with shape and connection, is the poetry and life of Walt Whitman. The structure is similar to “The Hours,” but Whitman’s presence never seems essential the way Virginia Woolf was to “The Hours.” The parallels Cunningham sets up in “Specimen Days” seem contrived rather than the story’s natural outgrowth. The reader knows, expects, and is ultimately unimpressed. (Stefen Styrsky)
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Walt Whitman One of the strengths of the book is to examine whether or not Whitman “disguised himself so well that he would be remembered as a homophobe rather than as the courageous champion of ‘the love that dare not speak its name?’” Kantrowitz concludes that “Whitman’s talent for contradicting himself was able to save him,” and even finds a benefit in the academic effort “by so many critics in denying and defending the simple truth [of Whitman’s homosexuality], to wit, “if the author remains elusive in some ways, we are forced to pay more attention to his work. Very few will ever pay as much attention as Kantrowitz has. (Steve Turtell).
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