Beyond Seuss at the Springfield Museums

 

As They Saw It: Women Artists Then and Now

            Through January 14, 2024

A Gathering: Works from Contemporary Black American Ceramic Artists

            Through March 24, 2014

Ways of My Ancestors: We Are Nipmuc

            Through February 25, 2014

Springfield Museums

 

The five building complex at 21 Edwards Street in Springfield, Massachusetts doesn’t get as much love as it deserves. Other than the Basketball Hall of Fame, the city is best known for its association with Theodore Geisel, aka/ Dr. Seuss. Many visitors never even enter the Seuss museum; they head for the sculpture park to let their kids climb on the oversized statues there (signs forbidding it notwithstanding). Three current exhibits give reason to check out a few non-Seuss treasures.

 

As They Saw It is a 60-piece sampling of women’s art displayed in the D’Amour Museum of Fine Art culled from the museum’s own collection and borrowed from the MFA in Boston and the Fenimore in Cooperstown, New York. It wasn’t that long ago that women’s art wasn’t taken seriously by the art world and the handful of those whose work hung on museum walls were pretty much confined to domestic themes. Mostly the ones seen weren’t artists at all, rather the subject for men with paintbrushes, cameras, and chisels. Is it any wonder that in the 1970s feminists began using the phrase “the male gaze?” 

 

Mary Ann Wilson

 

 

The earliest piece in the exhibit comes from Mary Ann Wilson whose “Maremaid” [sic] was made in 1815. It’s a delightful folk art image from an artist from New York State whose work remained unknown until 1943. I was struck, though, by the number of women who turned to self-portraiture. Call them the original selfie creators, though what they created in far more interesting than today’s cellphone snappers. Ellen Day Hale (1885) created hers in a manner evocative of John Singer Sargent until you take a closer look at her boyish face peering outward with… well, what exactly? Defiance? Insouciance? It mesmerizes me when it hangs in Boston and I appreciated getting closer to it in Springfield. Oriole Farb (1978) used looser lines to capture herself in a visual pun. It’s a painting but she’s looking in a mirror, holding a camera, and is poised to snap a selfie decades before such a word appeared! And then there’s Mary Bero’s modernist and abstracted look at her bare-breasted self (1980s).

 

Ellen Day Hale

 

Oriole Farb

Mary Bero

 

 

As one can easily observe, women often bring a different way of looking at the world. That is certainly true of Dorothea Lange, who would get my vote as the greatest of all American photographers. In the 1930s, there were still folks around who were once enslaved. Lange turned her lens on one such individual in 1937 and gave it a telling title: “Ex-Slave with a Long Memory.” Isabel Bishop evinces Reginald Marsh in her 1942 “Ice Cream Cones.” It’s two young women eating their frozen treats on a street corner without constraint as if they couldn’t care less what anyone thinks. There’s certainly a don’t mess-with-me vibe in Cara Lucia Arla’s 2020 photo “Lucia.” In which we see a Native American woman staring full face forward and dressed as a befeathered Wonder Woman.  And then there’s Faith Ringgold, the preeminent African American fiber artist. Note that her subjects are literally untethered in “Dancing on the George Washington Bridge” (2020). 

 

Dorothea Lange

Isabel Bishop

Cara Lucia Arla

Faith Ringgold

 

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Aisha Harrison

 

I’m usually not a big fan of ceramics, but I adored A Gathering, which shows works from the very first traveling show of Black American ceramic artists originally organized by the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis. The moment I saw Aisha Harrison’s “Ancestor 1” I wondered, “What  in the blazes took so long? Ellamaria Foley-Ray’s “Earth Seed Quilt” is as it sounds, ceramics as fabric. For poignancy, there is  Earline Green’s “Henrietta.” It’s amazing in how she gives us the illusion of drapery in stiff form, but note the name in at the bottom left. Green evokes Henrietta Lax, the African American woman who died in 1951 whose cell line has been used in research since her death–without family permission. A more recent unsettling homage is Janthiel Shaw’s “Grief for Philando Castile,” a reference to a young black man’s 2016 death at the hands on Minneapolis police officers. You can be excused if you want to wonder back to Kristina Batiste’s calm “prospect and refuge” to recenter. 

 

Ellamarie Foley-Ray

K

Earline Green

Janthiel Shaw

Kristina Batiste

 

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There’s a small exhibit in the Museum of Science to the Nipmuc, Massachusetts Algonquin peoples. Stories of Native Americans are often those of extermination but the photographs behind a diorama of traditional life tell a different tale. They silently scream, “We’re still here and we’re proud.” They also want you to know they are "freshwater people." Mission accomplished. Take a peek and you’ll need no words from me.

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

Raw Deal a Decent B-Movie

 

Raw Deal (1948)

Directed by Anthony Mann

Eagle-Lion Films, 79 minutes, Not-rated.

★★★

 

 

 

 

Film noir is best known for its lighting, not dazzling production values. That is certainly the case of the 1948 film Raw Deal directed by Anthony Mann. The cinematography from John Alton is often stunning, even when externals of the picture appear chintzy. Moreover, it’s a pretty decent story that invites us to overlook cinematic drawbacks.

 

Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe) is a minor hooligan working for a major one. As is often the case in such arrangements, when things go wrong it’s the low-level guys like Joe that take the rap. Joe agrees to take the fall and go to prison in exchange for a promise from syndicate head Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr ) of $50,000 when he is released. Joe begins to get stir crazy and conspires with his girlfriend Pat Reagan (Claire Trevor) to go over the wire. Coyle even helps with the planning of the breakout, though his secret motive is the hope that Joe will be killed in the effort and he won’t have to pay out.

 

The jailbreak is semi-successful, only semi because the getaway car is damaged during the escape. This forces Joe to hideout at the home of Ann Martin (Marsha Hunt), his legal caseworker. She decides to help Joe because she is attracted to him and as days go by, she finds herself falling in love with him. Meanwhile, Coyle orders a hit on Joe and orders his

goons to do the job. They are searching for Joe as, of course, are the police.

 

When the cops close in, Ann fears for Joe’s safety and pleads with him to surrender. Instead, she finds herself on the lam with Joe and Pat. In such cases–a love triangle, an escaped criminal, pursuing assassins, and a sociopathic mob boss–things have a very high probability of going wrong. In this sense, the script of Raw Deal is cut from the same cloth as other film noir movies. Nevertheless it's an interesting film that features a kidnapping, a double cross when the femme fatale reveals herself, an attempt to flee the country, and the proverbial Big Confrontation finale. As I have reminded readers before, don't root for any of the lawbreakers because under the Hollywood code of the day, you couldn't depict a criminal profiting from his inequity. The delight of all film noirs, including Raw Deal, is watching how things play out.  

 

Raw Deal is not a piece of brilliant filmmaking and is generally considered a B-movie. Anthony Mann is best known for the Westerns that he made in the 1950s, though The Glenn Miller Story (1954) was probably his best directorial effort. He did have the sense to allow John Alton to practice his craft and paint the screen in light and shadows, which he did brilliantly. Raw Deal works because of Alton and the cast, especially O’Keefe, Trevor, Hunt, and Burr. The first three were then riding high on the screen popularity list, and Burr would soon win television fame for his leads in both Perry Mason and Ironside.

 

In its day, the movie got mediocre reviews. Of course, back then film noir pictures were quite common so it faced stiff competition. Today, it holds up well because of the synergy between its principals. B-movies like Raw Deal get that label because you don't see a lot of money on the screen. To reiterate, though, if the lighting is right and the script sufficiently gritty, you don’t need an opulent backdrop.

 

Think of Raw Deal as a cheap deal. In my view, it’s definitely worth the investment of watching. What they heck, it’s only 79 minutes long. If you’re like me, you can certainly waste more time doing something less worthy.

 

Rob Weir  

 

 

The Rules of the Game: Rediscover a Masterpiece

 

 

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Directed by Jean Renoir

Gaumont Film Company, 110 minutes, Not-rated.

In French with subtitles.

★★★★★

 

 

 

Timing is everything. The Rules of the Game is a case in point. French auteur Jean Renoir was fresh off two highly acclaimed films, but The Rules of the Game was filmed as war was on the horizon and released several months after Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the official beginning of World War II.

 

When audiences got a look at the film, it was booed and became a box office dud. Renoir’s pacifism and Communist Party sympathy didn't help, nor did the film’s uncertain fit among movie labels. It is a classic mixed genre, a satire wrapped in a drama, and tied together with a comedy of manners bow. This may have confused viewers, or perhaps a simply weren't in the mood for what could be misunderstood as frothy entertainment.

 

How quickly the worm turns. The Rules of the Game is now seen as not just a superb movie, but as one of the 10 greatest films ever made. Such lists are subject to intense debate, but there are many reasons to see it as a major cinematic accomplishment.

 

It is loosely structured as a drawing room comedy dressed in 1930s’ circumstances and post-Jazz Age mores. Call it a who-is-sleeping-with-whom film. Aviator André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) has just landed at a Paris airfield. Remember that in 1939 the line between pilot and daredevil was a thin one. André is thus surprised and depressed to see his friend Octave (Renoir) there, but not his girlfriend Christine (Nora Gregor).

 

You might think that Christine had reasons to be AWOL; after all, she’s married to Robert (Marcel Dalio), a marquis living in a sprawling country house. But that matters less than you would imagine; Robert knows about Christine and André and has a mistress of his own, Geneviève, though that relationship is fraught, as she too has another lover. The maid, Lisette (Paulette Dubost), is married to the jealous, loutish gamekeeper Schumacher (Gaston Modot), but she is also being pursued by Marceau (Julien Carette), a poacher Schumacher catches in the act. Rather than prosecute him, Robert hires him as a servant. Marceau isn't very good at that role, but it makes his pursuit of Lisette easier. For her part, Christine's problem isn't one man too many, it's her vanity and her propensity for using others as her moods dictate.

 

Such social arrangements usually work better in the abstract than in reality. Everything conspires and builds to an unhappy endings, including a fatal case of mistaken identity. That also may have contributed to the film's less than enthusiastic reception. It's not as if French audiences we're pining for more anxiety.

 

By most accounts, the set of Rules of the Game was this chaotic as the lives of its principles. Famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson worked in the production and opined there were no rules in the filming of Rules of the Game. Renoir was said to have adopted a style so laissez-faire that much of the dialogue was improvised on the spot.

 

So why the reassessment? First of all, Renoir and cinematographer Jean Bachelet pioneered in deep-focus camera work. That is, they opened the lens aperture to get the foreground, middle ground, and background in sharp focus throughout. That's standard stuff now, but it wasn't in 1939.

 

More importantly, the messy relationships can be seen as stand-ins for the temper of the times. Gadabouts Lissette and Christine embody leftover recklessness of the Jazz Age, and Christine some of the haughty overconfidence that led to France’s defeat a year later. Schumacher is not only crude, he's Germanically so. André is at turns hysterical and morose, hallmarks of the Depression era and mounting danger. Overall we have a cast and set of circumstances that portend disaster.

 

If you wish, though, you could just see the film as a soap opera involving foolish people headed for a fall. Even when we feel sympathy for a character, but we are seldom tricked into thinking any individual is self-aware enough to tumble towards a blissful fate.

 

Rules of the Game is indeed a masterpiece that should be on the bucket list of any serious cineaste. Put another way, there are reasons why Jean Renoir is considered one of the finest directors in movie history. Be sure to see the rediscovered 110-minute cut of Rules of the Game, not the 85-minute version.

 

Rob Weir

My Black Friday Shopping Wish List

 

 

 

 

Santa has arrived and now that he’s done with the Macy’s Parade he’s making his list for 12/25. If you see the Big Red Dude, please tell him I’d like the following:

 

1. A mysterious targeted electronic pulse that wipes out all Christmas music at retail stores and public venues.

 

2. A ban on clothing made of non-natural materials.

 

3. Laryngitis for anyone who tries to say that Trump cares about average Americans—he’d sell your organs on E-Bay—or those who want to say that Joe Biden is not too old to be POTUS.

 

4. A genius brewer to discover that beer can be made without using 3,000 different types of hops in each 12-ounce glass.

 

5. Collective awareness that an “influencer” isn’t a real thing.

 

6. Airtime for any naturalist who can explain the difference between a reindeer and a plain old deer.

 

7. The discovery of a magic pill that transforms pie into health food.

 

8.  An IQ requirement for voting. Or for running for elected office.

 

9. Unionization of elf labor.

 

10. Don’t we all want this one? A definitive explanation of how a rotund dude can fit down chimneys and how he gets into locked homes that have none.

 

Alice's Restaurant: Thanksgiving 1969 Style?

 

 

Alice’s Restaurant (1969)

Directed by Arthur Penn

United Artists, 111 minutes, R/PG (language, brief nudity, drug use)

★★★

 

 

 

Every Thanksgiving you can find a radio station playing Arlo Guthrie’s famed 18:34 talking blues song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre.” Some people say they are sick of hearing it, but isn’t this the time of the year to be bombarded by music we have heard a billion times (to wit, Christmas carols)? Not everyone knows that Alice's Restaurant was made into a movie. It's not a brilliant one, nor is it 100% accurate, even though Arthur Penn received a Best Director Oscar nomination. It hit theaters at an opportune time–just days after Woodstock. Today, it’s an amusing nostalgia trip. Or is it?

 

Most folks know the basics. Young Arlo Guthrie is an about to drop out of his Montana college. He returns East for Thanksgiving and stays with Ray and Alice Brock in an old church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, that’s in a state of renovation and chaos. A whole host of friends–hippies, motorcycle gang members, assorted oddballs–drop by for, as the song puts it, “a Thanksgiving dinner that can't be beat.” When it's over, Arlo and a friend load the garbage into a VW minivan and drive to the dump in Stockbridge. It’s closed for Thanksgiving, but they spot a bank filled with garbage and heave theirs into it. They are soon arrested for littering, which turns out to be a major crime in Stockbridge. They are jailed by “Officer Obie” until they make bail and ordered to appear before a judge. In the category of you-can’t-make-it-up, Obie’s photos of the crime scene go for naught as Judge Hannon is blind. It gets weirder when Arlo is drafted and must report to a New York City induction center. He is rejected from military service because of his “criminal” record.

 

This is true (mostly). The film converts Arlo’s 18 1/2 minute song into an 111 minute movie. To do so, details are scrambled, made-up, or exaggerated for cinematic purposes. Some scenes were added so noteworthy people could appear in cameos. For example, we see Pete Seeger at the deathbed of Woody Guthrie (Joseph Boley). Arlo arrives to play harmonica while Pete sings “Pastures of Plenty.” Oddly, Arlo’s littering companion is inexplicably renamed Roger. Former junkie Shelly (Michael McClanathan), a motorcycle enthusiast, is fictional, an excuse for a cameo in which then 26-year-old Joni Mitchell to appear at a snowy cemetery to sing (gloriously!) “Songs to Aging Children” at Shelly’s graveside. One exaggerated detail that caused bad will was the implication that Arlo had once slept with Alice Brock. (For the record, her Stockbridge eatery was never named Alice's Restaurant.)

 

Of course, Arlo stretched the truth in the original song, so I guess we can cut screenwriters Venable Herndon and Arthur Penn some slack. If you realize that both the song and the film are satirical it hardly matters; both captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s when the Vietnam War raged and the counterculture was at its height. The movie is fun to see, especially if you're tired of the song. See M. Emmett Walsh in his first film appearance as the group W bench Sergeant at the induction center and chuckle at the sight of old lefty Lee Hays as a minister. It's also cool to see several people portray themselves including William Obanhein* (“Obie”) and Judge Hannon, who was indeed blind.  Most of those in other roles were depicted by actors. Alice, for example, was played by actress Pat Quinn, Ray by James Broderick, and Arlo's mother Marjorie by Sylvia Davis. You probably won't recognize people in the minor roles and it hardly matters.

 

Why rehash events from over 50 years ago? Well, if you can get past the hippie garb and the political issues of the late 60s, there's quite a lot in both the song and the movie that remain distressingly relevant. Have politics improved since 1967?** Is your daily newsfeed filled with absurdities? Any new wars that ignited mass protest? Has militarism disappeared? Remember that phrase we see in movies: “Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Ah, but are there any innocents? Perhaps a healthy dose of satire would do us more good than a second helping of turkey.

 

Rob Weir

 

*In a nice twist, Arlo and Obie later became friends!

** The movie came two years after the song.

November 2023 Artist of the Month: San Miguel Fraser

 

 

 

San Miguel Fraser

Dots of Light

Culburnie CUL129D

 

During the 2020 Covid lockdown, musicians were forced off the road. Luckily it couldn’t stop the flow of creative energy. In Valladolid, Spain fiddlers Maria San Miguel and Galen Fraser took part in the “Stay at Home Festival.” It was a key moment in the evolution of the duo San Miguel Fraser. Maria, who is also an accomplished singer, is Castilian, but was schooled as a classical musician and excelled as an adroit interpreter of Galician and Basque music. Galen is a Berklee School of Music grad, but you could say he learned fiddle at his father’s knee. That would be Alasdair Fraser, one of the finest fiddlers on the planet. Somewhere along the line Galen also learned to play excellent cittern. The album Dots of Light is defined by the way in which San Miguel and Fraser use tradition and dance music as a springboard for roots music explorations.

 

“Dots of Light” opens the album and is, appropriately dedicated to those who acted as rays of hope illuminating the way through the dark moments of the lockdown. That’s Natalie Haas adding cello to a mid-tempo mix somewhat evocative of Scandinavian music. Close your eyes and you can imagine fireflies fliting about, sometimes deliberately and at other moments in interweaving patterns. “Cocido” comes a few tracks later. The CD linear notes inform us that it was one of the first tunes they created as a duo. It has a primal point counterpoint feel with San Miguel taking the lead and playing high notes that border on stridency. Fraser frames it by alternately bowing lower, plucking notes, or using his fiddle percussively. Cocido translates as “boiled” and the tune feels like it bubbled out of them.

 

“Bolero De Algorde” was composed in honor of the walled city of Zamora located in Castile and León region near the border with Portugal. Zamora is bisected by the Duero/Duoro River, a region known its wines in both nations. Miguel showcases her vocal talents with emotive gusto. At times the fiddle exudes a Roma vibe, but with quickened accents that invite you to click your heels. San Miguel showcases vocals exuding emotion and gusto. These days the bolero is associated with Cuban music and love songs, but it actually originated in Spain.

 

 

The jota/xota is another Spanish dance in 3/4 time­–sometimes 6/8–and it’s exuberant however its played. San Miguel and Fraser join forces with the Galician duo Caamaño & Amerixeiras. “Jota deGuijar/Xota deRiotortoto” has a very different sound. Galicia is so named for the Gallaeci, Celtic tribes that once occupied northwestern Spain and Portugal. This set invites you to add some quick time hand clap filler as you sway to and fro. Note how the tunes build, settle, and build anew. I’ve also added a link to Miguel and Fraser playing a different set of jotas. Notice Miguel’s precise fingering, perhaps an offshoot of her classical training. Above all, you can see the joyousness of the jota. As much as they concentrate, they can’t help but break out into smiles.

 

Dots of Light ends with a set perfect for the season: “A Waltz For Winter.” Like the other eight tracks, Miguel and Fraser let the tune determine the pacing rather than simply seeking to dazzle. This one goes from something as quiet as a downy snowfall to a blizzard and back to gentle. In all, Dots of Life is a reason to celebrate life and dance.

 

Rob Weir

 

  

 

Tresspasses: Dangerous Liaisons Amidst The Troubles

 

Trespasses (2022)

By Louise Kennedy

Riverhead, 293 pages.

★★★

 

 

It has been said that Ireland is the only Western European nation that never experienced the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Reformation. That's a mild exaggeration and heaven knows my Scottish ancestors have their share of lowlights, but there's indeed a heavy air of tragedy hanging over Irish history. This shows up so often in literature that I've dubbed it the Angela’s Ashes* Syndrome. Every now and then Emily will finish a depressing Irish novel, hurl it across the room, and proclaim, “Thank God I'm not Irish!” All of which is to say that Trespasses by Louise Kennedy is that kind of novel.

 

It is set during The Troubles of the early 1980s, a time in which sectarian strife in Northern Ireland burned with white-hot passion and senseless violence. Comely twenty-four-year-old year old Belfast resident Cushla Lavery is a primary school teacher whose students routinely witness bloodshed and lose family members. Imagine being a second-grader in a place where you understand homicide better than your ABC’s. Cushla carries the added burden of trying to be a Good Samaritan to seven-year old Davy McGeown and his impoverished family.

 

Cushla is a bit luckier than many in that she lives in a neighborhood in which there is fragile tolerance between Catholics and Protestants. There's no love lost, but as long as everyone respects what is perceived to be the natural order of things, the groups just disparage each other in private and drink in the same pubs, like the one owned by Cushla’s older brother Eamonn and frequented by Michael Agnew. He’s a Protestant–a Prod in the local parlance–but he’s also a civil rights a lawyer who champions the view that the British government has wronged Northern Ireland’s Catholics. The Laverys’  widowed mother Gina helps out at the pub, but she's an alky, which is hard on inventory. To help keep finances in line, Cushla often doubles as a barmaid. That’s where Michael and Cushla meet. Michael and several other Prods even ask Cushla to help them learn Irish Gaelic.

 

Of course, the bigger trouble behind The Troubles is that organized groups such as the Ulster Defence Association (Protestant) and the Irish Republican Army (Catholic) are not on board with a philosophy of live and let live. If you think either group is above recruiting youngsters or the not-so-bright to their respective causes, remind yourself that fanaticism doesn’t work that way. Prods and Catholics alike have ears to the ground to dole out retribution for those who violate their norms. This is so pronounced that the Irish National Liberation Army doesn't even trust the regular IRA to be fanatical enough in its anti-Protestantism hatred.

 

You can imagine that Cushla’s growing attraction to Michael isn't the wisest thing for her career, her family, or their respective safety. Yet Cushla pursues her infatuation even though Michael is married, has children, and is nearly two decades older than she. As such matters often go, each is foolish enough to think they can keep their relationship secret. One way Cushla tries to cover her tracks is to allow others to think she's dating Gerry Devlin, a work colleague, but it's not a very good cover.

 

Trespasses is a romance, but with elements of potential tragedy.  At over 670,000 residents Belfast is a medium-sized city, but during The Troubles it functioned more like a patchwork of neighborhoods than a single municipality. In a place where no one entirely trusts anyone else, the accidental and incidental can be deadly. There are always those too blind to see their own hate, including Father Slattery, a 60s-something vestment-wearing bully and misanthrope. But at least he’s visible; it’s the ones in the shadows who are more venomous.

 

Kennedy does a fine job of taking us inside Belfast before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement established the framework for a peace that has (mostly) held. How did Cushla and Michael fare before that happened? That would be a spoiler. I will say, though, that Trespasses is Kennedy’s debut novel and that, though she spins a good tale, she too often telegraphs where the novel is headed. Her health woes and the fact that she channeled childhood memories imbue the novel with urgency, but more ambiguity would have made it an even stronger work.

 

Rob Weir

 

* The reference is to Frank McCourt’s 1996 novel, which is unrelentingly bleak.