Poster House Dedicated to Its Namesake

 

 

Poster House

119 West 23^rd Street

New York City

Current Exhibits

 

Poster art is so common that many of us never bother to think of it as art in a conventional way. Posters are something we slap up on our dorm rooms and our first apartments because we can’t afford “real” art. When we get a bit more flush, most of them come down in favor of paintings, laser prints, and other forms of so-called “fine art.” If we have posters at all, they tend to be from museum exhibits or things we keep for sentimental reasons (like concerts and our favorite musicians).

 

We do an injustice to graphic designers and illustrators when we think of them as purely commercial or decorative. Poster House in New York City is dedicated to making us see posters seriously. How? By hanging them on museum walls like the real art they are–complete with curator labels. If you protest that they are endlessly reproducible, you’re right, but if you see the same image a lot it means that the artist was successful in creating a striking design.

 

Poster House has changing exhibits dedicated to posters. Its only downside is exactly that of the posters you hung on your own walls. That is, it’s hard to find a good space that doesn’t have a ton of glare bouncing off the glass. (Non-reflective glass is a near oxymoron!) This explains why some of my examples below are not shot straight on. I also tried to get rid of reflections and glare, but there’s only so much I could do without spending all day on a few images!

 

 

 

The big exhibit is called Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters (through September 8, 2024). Maybe you just think of the Big Apple as rotten to is core or just a typical American city that happens to be bigger than any other. Yet it has long held allure for foreigners. It has forests of skyscrapers, not just one or two, and it’s the probably the most diverse urban settlement since the days of the 3^rd century Roman Empire–a veritable United Nations of humanity. 

 

 

 

It holds that distinction for many Americans as well. When I was a child I lived five hours away, but it might as well have been Mars to my Planet Earth. Railroads advertised trips there (not that my town had passenger rail) and, if you think about it, it’s one of the few cities that explains itself. If you say, “I’m going to New York City this weekend,” the automatic response is, “Oh! What are you going to do there?” Tell someone you’re heading to Cincinnati or Boise and they’ll ask, “Why?!!” 

 

 

 

We noticed that TWA had some of the most intriguing designs. Trans World Airlines went out of business in 2001, so maybe it should have put more emphasis on its planes but for decades TWA was the king of the runway and the sketch board. 

 

 

 

Whether you think about it or not, movie posters have long been a staple for luring patrons to buy theater tickets. Have you ever found yourself wondering about a movie because its poster grabbed your eye? A second exhibit is The Anatomy of a Movie Poster: The Work of Dawn Baille (through November 3, 2024). She’s one of the big (and well-paid!) names in Hollywood because producers and directors are aware that she has a knack for attention-grabbing poster art. I’ll bet almost everyone has seen the examples below. I loved some of the art even when I hated the movies attached to them! I can also say without fear that were I a teen again, I’d definitely have Catherine Zeta-Jones on my wall!

 

 

 

Another effective exhibit was We Tried to Warn You! Environmental Crisis Posters (through November 3, 2024). The first Earth Day was in 1970. Posters were effective then and now in raising eco-consciousness. This exhibit has what is easily the most famous environmental image of all time, that of an American Indian with a tear in his eye invoked by looking at litter and pollution. You couldn’t do this kind of setup anymore. The actor was a white Italian American dude in red-face. It worked, though. So too have subsequent eco posters. The pity of course is that we were warned about the coming environmental crisis and the piper is now collecting his fee. 

 

 

Vivian Maier Unseen

 

 

 

 Vivian Maier: Unseen Work

Fotografiska

281 Park Avenue S.

New York City

Through September 29, 2024

 

 

Is there a sadder story than that of a genius who remains undiscovered in life? Vivian Maier (1926-2009) fits that bill. Very little is known of her other than having been born to an Austrian father and a French mother, the latter of whom apparently had some family land in a French alpine village. Vivian and her siblings lived with their mother and spent their childhood yo-yoing between France and the Bronx, though when Vivian was 25 she was a sweatshop worker in France. She landed in Chicago in 1956 to work as a nanny. That and housekeeping were her primary occupations. She came into some money–probably from the sale of the farm in France–that allowed her to travel in 1959-60, but that soon gave out and she continued her stints as a domestic worker, including cleaning Phil Donahue’s house. As an adult, she lived in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Everywhere she went, she documented street life.

 

Maier was a socialist and a feminist, but from the looks of things, she spent most of what she made on photography. She shot mostly with a medium format Rolliflex and a small Leica, both expensive cameras. One family for whom she nannied helped her when she was elderly and about to be evicted, but Maier’s life came to an end when she slipped on ice and hit her head. By then she was also in default of her storage unit. It and repositories elsewhere contained more 150,000 photos and tons of stock that had never been developed. When this material was auctioned, several collectors realized its value. In the very American-but-sad aftermath, lawsuits have ensued over who owns what.

 

Some of Maier’s story has been told in Finding Vivian Maier, a superb and Oscar-nominated documentary film made in 2013, but new revelations continue to come to light. Some of them are contained within an exhibit at Fotografiska in the Grammercy Park/Triangle Building section of New York. If you’re wondering about the gallery name, New York sports a branch of a photography museum based in Stockholm, Sweden.

 

What a show! Though Maier was unknown in her lifetime, those with an eye for quality rank her among the greatest street photographers in history. Her name is now mentioned in the same breath as Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Weegee. Personally, I like her work more than that of Arbus, who is often too sensationalist for my taste.

 

Maier worked primarily in black and white, though later she turned to both color photography and video. Those were not her forte. If you have ever doubted me when I have insisted that black and white is more creative that color, it’s on display in Maier’s work. You will see similar poses and subjects in color that are blah compared to her crisp black and white shots. The sharpness of her Rolli doesn’t hurt a bit, nor does the fact that Maier’s own status made her simpatico with most of her subjects. She seldom shot celebrities–a photo of the gorgeous Lena Horne is an exception–and made little effort to glamorize. Somehow, though, dignity comes through, as does Maier’s keen eye for composition.

 

 I couldn’t help but contrast Maier’s images with a retrospective by Bruce Gilden (b. 1946) titled Why These? Why indeed? He likes to go out of his way to present the ugly underbelly of America–as if we don’t get enough of that every day! Maier evoked sympathy; Gilden made me want to hurl, as did his screw-you artist statement. A brisk walk through his exhibit was more than I needed to see.

 

But back to the positive. Let Maier’s images speak for themselves. If you’ve never seen the aforementioned documentary, it’s on numerous streaming sites.

 

Rob Weir

 

Lovely action capture

French children

She had a series on sleeping people!

Either the corner grocer or a tax man!

Lena Horne

Gosh, Frank. Whacha think it is?

Could be a film noir scene

Making the mundane interesting

Self-portrait with a twist.

Like many poor shutterbugs, she was her own model

 

 

 

Robert Parker in the 21st Century

9/17/1932-1/18/2010

 

Robert Brown Parker died on January 18, 2010. Several subsequent books bearing his name were penned by others, but these three were by Parker. I enjoyed his 21^st century output, but I detected a falling off. Part of what made Spenser tick was his inner battle between insouciance, libido, and his boxing days swagger versus his erudition, better angels, loyalty, and devotion to Susan Silverman. If you reckon that he and Susan were in their twenties when they meet in the 1974 novel God Save the Child, they’d be in the 60s when Parker died. Granted it’s fiction, but when you follow characters across decades, certain illusions grow harder to sustain. Try these three and see if you agree.

 

 

 

As in many Spenser novels, Bad Business (2004) begins with a woman. This time it’s Marlene Crowley whose husband Trent is the CFO for Kinergy, a high-powered company trading in energy and systems. Marlene thinks Trent is cheating on her and she wants Spenser to spy, catch, and let her decide on whether to release. This is sleazy business for PIs, but it gets weirder when he has to bluff his way past lawyers to get started and finds that he is being shadowed by two other PIs. Spenser suspects Trent might be too much of a workaholic to be burning the candle at both ends, but there’s nothing like an office murder, stonewalling, and a seductive company spokeswoman to draw him in. Into what? You might recall that the 1990s and early 2000s saw stock watering, banking and telecom scandals, and two scams in the energy business: Enron and Pacific Gas and Electric. Alas, Bad Business pretty much sums what has become standard these days. Parker no doubt mined the news for this one. Like his character Spenser, Parker also liked to lampoon insipid trends. In Bad Business radio talk shows and love-the-one-you’re-with sex therapy are pricked with the lampoon lance. 

 

 

Parker returned to current events in School Days (2005). What could be more common than blowing away school children with big guns? How else are we going to keep the balloon and Teddy bear industry in business? Sorry, that was me channeling Spenserian snark. In this case two teens slaughter seven in a tony private school located in “Dowling,” a wealthy community west of Boston (Wellesley? Weston?). They were apprehended and have confessed. Lily Ellsworth insists her grandson Wendell Grant is innocent and was bullied by codefendant Jared Clarke. Even Wendell’s parents are sure he’s guilty, but the wealthy Ellsworth is willing to spend whatever it takes to clear Wendell’s name. Only someone as stubborn as Spenser would take such a case. The thing that bothers him isn’t the “what” (the shootings); it’s the “how.” How did two 17-year-old suburban kids get their hands on the arsenal they had at their disposal? How did Wendell even know how to use such weapons? The act of asking such questions makes Spenser as popular as Ted Bundy in a suburban town drowning in shock and yearning to heal. Spenser’s not getting a whole lot of cooperation–from anyone. Wendell is practically silent and the creepy Jared is proof that nature sometimes trounces nurture. Spenser plays a game of follow the guns and drags out his own arsenal–of literary allusions.

 

 

The Professional (2009) came out the year before Parker died. I’d have to call this one an amusing but silly mystery. The namesake “pro” is Gary Eisenhower, who specializes  in having sex with women he meets at an upscale health club then blackmailing them. Yet his “victims” both adore and desire Gary, despite his demands for major hush money. He’s funny, great in the sack, offers diversion for wealthy women, and never physically coerces them. Some of Spenser’s buddies tell him that it’s unlikely Gary can be charged given that those doing with whom he’s doing the nasty won’t testify against him. After all, they don’t want their husbands to know they’ve been unfaithful, nor do they want to stop sleeping with him. Four rich women employ a law firm to hire Spenser to get Gary to stop blackmailing them. Even Spenser kind of likes the happy-go-lucky lug. How to stop him? Only one woman ever testified against Gary, the president of a woman’s college in Western Massachusetts. (Let the speculation begin!) She gives Spenser insight and Susan shows off her psych Ph.D. to provide more. Several of the complainants  are murdered, but Spenser knows Gary wasn’t the one who did it. So who did and why? Aside from the murders, this one could be called “Giggling with Gigolos.” Fun, but decidedly lightweight.

 

Rob Weir

Burn the Summer's Hottest Read!

 

 

Burn (2024)

By Peter Heller

Knopf, 304 pages

★★★★★

 

Few authors write about people in peril through no actions of their own as well as Peter Heller. His is the sort of world in which even those in a post-apocalyptic world are veritable innocents. In his new novel Burn Heller imagines an all too conceivable future dystopia.

 

Heller’s protagonists are two friends so close that they could be twins, the sort whose deepest secrets are somehow known to each other. Storey and Jess grew up in Putney, Vermont, though Jess, whose point of view largely narrates the novel, now lives in Colorado. Because the two are so simpatico, each year they reunite for an outdoor adventure. This time they are camping and hunting for moose in remote reaches of Maine. The woods are quiet–too quiet. And why are there no vehicles on the roads? More disturbing things emerge: human bodies, blown bridges, incinerated towns, and Black Hawk helicopters in the sky.

 

Much has been made of the so-called “disuniting” of America. What if it began to happen in earnest and you didn't get the memo? Storey and Jess find themselves in the midst of a civil war and have no way of determining who's who in the struggle. Who can you possibly trust? That much is largely predetermined because there is scarcely a living person to be found. The first one they spot is rowing furiously across a lake but is blown to smithereens by an aerial assault. So much for that possible source of information.

 

The two young men make their way northward because they've no real idea of which direction to turn. As supplies dwindle they replenish them by raiding moored boats or pilfering whatever abandoned buildings they encounter. They compensate for dying phone batteries when they chance upon a crank-operated radio. Jess was never great in his French lessons, but he retained enough that when he finds a Montreal station he decipher just enough from a news report to infer that Maine has declared independence from the United States. He also hears of terrorist activities that have killed thousands. But he still doesn't know who's attacking whom.

 

Having grown up in Vermont–Storey still lives there–the two know how to survive in the wild, but which way to a safe inhabited town so they can get back home? In some ways it doesn't matter. Things are so confused and the ruination so thorough that anyone they encountered might try to shoot them upon first sight. Their journey becomes more perilous and difficult when they come upon Collie, a five-year-old girl who wants to find her parents and wonders why her beloved dog Crystal is “asleep” and won't wake up. (See what Heller did there?) There’s a war going on, but would you just leave her there?

 

Burn is a thriller in which a single move could be the last one. In such a scenario, Jess and Storey spend a lot of time lurking in the shadows. They reminisce, muse upon their friendship, think upon the secrets they hold, and contemplate the choices they have made since they were boys. Jess recalls how he spent most of his boyhood and teenaged years living in the barn of Storey’s parents because he had trouble relating to his own. He also thinks of how his marriage is on the rocks and wonders if he has screwed up his best chance for happy life. Will these two friends and their unlikely companion survive amidst the ashes of destruction? If any of them do, will they find their better selves? Heller is too good of a writer to giftwrap such questions.

 

Burn is ultimately like a wildfire that could wipe out everything in its path, change directions, or simmer to easily contained embers. Heller excels at contrasts between nature and humankind, the poetic beauty of the first and the indiscriminate destruction of the latter. He is a gifted storyteller and is equally adroit at plotting action for maximum impact. In fact, he's so good at it, you might find yourself doing as I did, burning through the pages as if the flames would scorch me if I didn't finish quickly.

 

Rob Weir

New Britain Museum of Art II: Permanent Collection

 

 

 

New Britain Museum of American Art II

56 Lexington Avenue

New Britain, Connecticut

Permanent Collection

 

Before the NBMAA expanded, the current Landers House and several outbuildings housed its collection. It’s bigger, nicer, and more flexible now but it remains true to its original mission: American art.

 

For the most part it shows it roots. It was founded in 1903, hence its four major strengths lie in 19^th century works such as the Hudson River School, Gilded Age painters, regional artists, and American Impressionists. It has holdings that date to the Colonial era as well as some modern and contemporary works, but anything after the 1940s falls into the category of choice, but small in number.

 

Its best newer works might well be its whimsical sculptural benches that are a delight for both the eyes and weary feet. My favorite was the above bronze bear. Is it growling or grinning? I’m going with the latter, but I’m kind of partial to bears.

 

 

 

 

The NBMAA is also heavier on painting than sculpture, but I was taken by “Metamorphosis” (1960) by Dina Melicov. She twisted and deconstructed bodies and puckishly made one evoke a tooth and the other an ear. 

 

Church

 

Insofar as painting goes, Frederic Church ticked both the Hudson River and regional art boxes with his 1849 “West Rock New Haven.” Bear in mind that the Hudson River School took inspiration from transcendentalism and often opted for grandeur rather than realism. 

 

Bradford

 

 

I don’t know much about William Bradford, but “Of the Greenland Coast” (1873) is an attention-grabber. That smudge in the middle is the sun–at midnight–a tip-off this scene came from midsummer. How different is this light than that of impressionist Childe Hassam’s “The Dragon Cloud” (1903) or early modernist Rockwell Kent’s 1907 “Toilers of the Sea.” 

 

Hassam

Kent

 

 

 

Beal

 

The first part of the 20^th century saw the rise of the Ashcan school of painting that took a harder and often harsher look at American society. Ashcan painters repudiated “pretty” art in favor of street life, industrial workers, poverty, and grit. Think of the bloodied boxers of George Bellows or his famed “The Lone Tenement.” From across the room Gifford Beal could be mistaken for Bellows, though his “Elevated Columbus Avenue” (1916) isn’t as expertly executed. It does, however, capture a side of urban life in the shadows. Is that a foiled picket pocket we see on the left? It’s certainly a mixed crowd under the El. John Sloan’s “Main Street Gloucester” (1917) has the same vibe. Apparently France had its seedy side as well if we believe “Paris Street No. 2” by Everett Shinn.

 

Sloan

Shinn

 

 

Grant Wood

 

You could say a lot about Irish immigration–including its male public life and the invention of dewy-eyed exile culture–in “A Sentimental Ballad” (1942) by modernist Grant Wood. I used to show this slide to discuss how Irish women felt differently about emigration, but had no idea that the NBMAA owned it. (Far fewer Irish women shed tears for the Auld Sod!)   

 

Beaux

Du Bois

 

 

On the topic of women, Cecilia Beaux is a sadly overlooked painter, which is a bloody shame for the first woman to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. As we see above, like John Singer Sargent, she did a lot of portraits for hire. I was also mesmerized by a 1939 piece from Yvonne Pene Du Bois, “Carmine Street.” It’s quite a contrast to the rubbing elbows scenes from Beal and Sloan. Her work has the loneliness of Edward Hopper, but also an edge of surrealism.

 

I could go on, but let’s just say you can spend a fascinating day hunting down your own favorites at the NBMAA. If you need a break, there’s a nice terrace for a coffee, or you can stroll across the street to a nice public park.

 

Rob Weir

Robert Parker in the 1990s

 

  

My favorite Robert B. Parker Spenser novels were those from the 1990s. By then the characters had been fleshed out and seemed like old friends. That made reading like sitting down with people you’ve known for years and catching up with the latest news. The difference, of course, is that Spenser and his inner circle got into some bizarre situations that often involved guns. Here are four I particularly like.

 

 

 

In an earlier piece I said that Senser doesn’t think he can save the world or pose as a social reformer. In Double Deuce (1992) he does the latter. More improbably, Hawk is the catalyst. Hawk maintains the exterior of an unsentimental guy, but when 15-year-old Devona and her 3-month-old daughter are gunned down because of a turf war, Hawk’s blood boils, and he makes a promise. The title references 22 Hobart Street where the murder took place. Hawk asks Spenser to help him pacify the area occupied by street gangs. For once, Hawk is on board with the idea of no shooting if it can be avoided. That’s a challenge. This is such a nasty section of black Boston that law enforcement keeps its distance. How are two guys–one of them white–going to clean it up by sitting in a car, watching, drinking coffee, and staring down threats. By Parker standards Double Deuce has less violence but is often more tense. The resolution is unlikely to become a model for community policing or urban renewal, but it’s unique and effective. 

 

 

 

Susan is the fulcrum in Walking Shadow (1994). She’s on the board of the Port City Theatre Company, a hope-over-resources avantgarde outfit in a decaying fishing town. Its reminiscent of New Bedford, but Port City is close to Boston and has a large Chinese population, so perhaps it’s a composite of Revere and someplace like Quincy. Spenser is asked by its artistic director to investigate his sense that he is being stalked. Paranoia? When an actor is shot dead on stage–which puts a damper into everyone’s evening–there’s clearly something afoot. Another tipoff is the namesake shade that disappears from where the person making it should be. Spenser is thrown in the world of tong wars, kidnapping, unrequited love, and more murders. He senses extreme danger even though Hawk and semi-reformed hood Vinnie Morris have his back. Translator Mei Ling also assists, as Spenser is out of his depth in how the Chinese underworld world works. It has a twist I did not see coming.  

 

 

 

In Thin Air (1995), Spenser is called upon to do a solid for a guy who has done many for him: Sgt. Frank Belson of the Boston Police Department. The divorced Belson hasn’t been the luckiest in love, but he seems to have the jackpot in the former Lisa St. Claire. They have been married for less than a year when Lisa disappears, and Frank asks Spenser to find her. He quickly discovers she has been kidnapped. Most Spenser novels have the man himself as the omniscient narrator, but Thin Air is also narrated by Lisa in captivity. (Her narrative is in italics in my copy of the book.) All signs point to a former partner from her days in which her life was, shall we say, less respectable than being a cop’s wife. Spenser will call upon gun-for-hire Chollo and Frank must reveal and hear things about Lisa that he’d rather not, especially events from her life in the Merrimack River town of Proctor. If that weren’t enough, Frank is hospitalized in an apparent assassination attempt. Chollo helps Spenser gain access to a Latino network, but can Chollo cool his jets and let Spenser call the metaphorical shots? This one has a fiery ending.

 

 

 

Potshot was published in 2001–the first year of the 21^st century–but I’m sneaking it into this column on the 1990s. Spenser is so associated with Boston, the North Shore, and (occasionally) New York City that it’s easy to forget that Spenser’s bio has him born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming. As in Double Douce, Spenser is akin to a Wild West sheriff. A referral from the LAPD puts Spenser in contact with Mary Lou Buckman from the desert town of Potshot, Arizona. Her husband Steve has been murdered. She insists that the deed was done The Preacher, the head of a gang holed up in an old mine in the Sawtooth Mountain foothills. Local sheriff Dean Walker is clearly not up to the task of confronting The Preacher or stop him and his associates from extorting local businesses. Spenser is offered major cash to get rid of the gang anyway he can. To that end, he recruits a gang of his own–including Hawk, Chollo, and Vinnie. Spenser reckons his seven is plenty to eliminate their 40. The problem is that Spenser doubts  that The Preacher killed Steve, Mary Lou is on the level, or that restoring civic pride is what his contract is all about.

 

Rob Weir