Arts & Entertainment
Brush strokes from the masters
Gauguin exhibit at the National Gallery towers over other spring shows
Painter Paul Gauguin put himself in the position of Jesus in his famous work "Christ in the Garden of Olives." (Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art)
Sometimes he signed his painting with the name Paul Gauguin. But sometimes he didn’t, choosing to style himself on the canvas instead as simply “P Go.”
The name Paul Gauguin of course looms large for manifest good reason, in the pantheon of post-impressionist painting, as one of the true modern great masters, just as the new show, “Gauguin — Maker of Myth,” at the National Gallery of Art East Building, looms so large also, casting its grand and glorious shadow over the spring 2011 world of D.C.-area galleries and museums.
He was, in effect, a pedophile, slaking his admitted appetite for the nubile young Polynesian nymphets whose beckoning bodies and come-hither glances are the standard trope of the final phase of his work. There, in the primitive paradise he sought in the South Seas, in Tahiti, where he died in 1903, he painted these young girls as exotic and erotic Eves, tempting him in the tropical garden, having abandoned his wife and children, a refugee from his earlier life, on the surface at least, as a proper bourgeois stockbroker in the Paris bourse.
Yes, of course there is other work of the visual arts to see this spring in the area. And much of it is also great. But the Gauguin show, unequivocally, should be seen first. It’s the first in the region in more than 20 years.
Earl “Rusty” Powell, the NGA director, describes the exhibit this way: “Gauguin spent a lifetime traveling to distant lands uncorrupted (he hoped) by civilization, but instead of finding a real paradise, he eventually found it only in his mythic dream world, where reality ended and the imagination began.” And that was his genius, together with his command of technique and his breakthrough innovations with form and color.
The new show, at the NGA through June 5, Powell says is “fabulous” and “spellbinding.”
One eye-opening example, says guest curator Belinda Thomson — who calls Gauguin a “rule-breaker” and an “embattled figure, in conflict with others and himself” — is his “blasphemous but arresting portrait of himself as Christ,” a stunning oil on canvas of 1889, “Christ in the Garden of Olives,” from the period before he moved to the South Seas, when he painted in a small studio in Brittany.
The colossus exhibit of Gauguin of course faces some competition elsewhere in Washington, but two of its rivals are actually also at the NGA.
First, there is the jet-black gondola outside the arched entrance to the East Building’s new show “Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals,” there through May 30. This is the first major exhibit to feature Canaletto, the 18th century “view painter” whose meticulous depiction of scenes from the city of lagoons formed a major motif of the English view of Venice. The show features 21 masterworks by Canaletto himself and 34 by his rivals including the arguably equally great Guardi.
The other NGA exhibit, however, is small scale where the other two are vast in either vista or vision. It is formed of simply two paintings, pairing two works by the little-known early 17th century Dutch artist Hendrick ter Brugghen, yet it is still titled “Larger Than Life.” And it is. One of the paintings is “Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene, 1625,” a religious scene obviously, on loan from Oberlin College in Ohio for this exhibit, which closes May 15 in the NGA’s West Building. The Dutch artist, powerfully influenced by the gay painter Caravaggio, brought the Italian’s style back to Utrecht where the Dutchman soon became recognized as one of the city’s several “Caravaggisti.”
“Sebastian” is paired with another ter Brugghen called “Bagpipe Player, 1624,” recently purchased by the NGA for a cool $10 million and clearly worth every penny. The latter painting is so very different from the Saint Sebastian and setting them side by side offers ample occasion for reflection on the spectrum of human possibility. See them both on the main floor of the West Building in the Dutch and Flemish galleries.
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By SPENCER MACNAUGHTON, ISABEL STOKES, and BELLA SAYEGH | After appearing on the 11th season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the first season of “Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World,” the sixth season of “RuPaul’s All Stars” and now the 11th season of “All Stars,” Silky Nutmeg Ganache, known by many as the Reverend, is undoubtedly a legend.
Born and raised in Moss Point, Miss., Ganache bears all in this episode of “UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton.” She speaks about her relationship with gender, her 100-pound weight loss, what it’s like living as a queer person of color in a red state and why she’s calling on allies to stand up for the trans community.
Patrons enjoyed a night out at the popular LGBTQ venue Crush Dance Bar on Friday, July 3.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
Theater
‘My Favorite Sociopath’ debuts at Shepherdstown’s CATF
Gay playwright Aurin Squire’s take on D.C. journalism in the ‘90s
‘My Favorite Sociopath’
Contemporary American Theater Festival
July 10-Aug. 2
Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Catf.org
Discernment. It’s a thing some people have, explains playwright Aurin Squire, especially when you’re gay or Black in America (Squire is both).
“You instinctively know when the mob is teaming up for the best interests of the powers that be. You can feel it in the air.”
In his sharp new satire “My Favorite Sociopath,” Squire writes about life experiences but set in a different time and place: It’s the 1990s, early days of the 24-hour news cycle, and three ambitious journalism students are pursuing success in D.C.
And now, Squire’s play, along with other new works, are making their world premieres at the annual Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University in historic, queer-friendly Shepherdstown, W.Va. (just a 90-minute drive from D.C.).
“All of my plays are queer in some way,” says Squire, 46. “This one touches on harmless and dangerous lies. The characters are on the spectrum sexually, and it’s interesting how all that falls out.”
And he’s given it a lot of thought.
“Already as a kid, it seemed to me that the rage against rap music and sex was coming from closeted people resisting their own urges and temptations. For me, it was interesting to see a witch hunt led by witches. Queer people can always call out a lie.”
Since September, Squire has also been working with a TV show about the tech industry set in Silicon Valley. He says, “It seems the general flow of the tech industry is that humanity and civilization is finished and it’s just about accumulating as many goods as possible before everything collapses. In fact, those who are profiting actually agree. But for those who disagree, they believe the solution is to build bigger gates, but activists believe we can stop this”
Yet, he’s learned from folks associated with the show. “Many say the quickest way to divorce yourself from any responsibility or regulations — smash and grab. Otherwise, you have to stop and think and regulate your desires for greed and power”
Squire possesses a penchant for pithy titles. He laughs, explaining the first thing he wrote as a student at Juilliard was “Obama-ology,” the comedy with contemporary message. While a lot of people liked the name, it didn’t necessarily vibe with the author. He concedes that he chooses names based on “easy to remember” and titles that won’t be easy to lose as a file.
Another is “Defacing Michael Jackson,” a coming-of-age dramedy set in rural Florida in 1984, specifically Squire’s native town Opa-locka, Miami, a fantastical place famed for its fanciful Moorish revival architecture.
Living in the shadow of exotic structures, he wasn’t particularly fazed. Squire says “It wasn’t until returning to visit after my freshman year at Northwestern University in Chicago that I realized how weird it was: When you grow up in a place, you take surroundings for granted no matter how over the top.”
Now based in New York (where for two happy years, 2017-2019, he shared digs with drag king Murry Hill), Squire returns frequently to Miami to be with family, but this summer has been filled with both work and travel.
Currently, he’s in Shepherdstown with CATF shaping up “My Favorite Sociopath.” Later this summer he will travel to South Africa for research, followed by a silent writing retreat in Santa Fe, N.M.
Much of Squire’s work reflects the Latino, African, Caribbean, African-American, and Jewish cultures he grew up around in South Florida.
When asked if today’s winds of anti-multiculturalism worry him, he replies, “No, because that’s going to pass. Most people don’t like, people are seeing the negative results of it, and the young people coming up despise it. White male gamers were tricked momentarily through the algorithms into voting against their own interests and they’re now seeing how it’s not working out for them.
“Conservatives always try to stop progress and eventually they always lose. It’s just a question of where we’ll be in the middle of the end of civilization before that happens. I’d like to hope we can turn the ship around before then.”
In addition to “My Favorite Sociopath,” CATF summer season features three other world premieres (Lisa D’Amour’s comedy “The Smoker,” “Refugee Rhapsody” by Yussef El Guindi, “Best Line Wins: A Play Inspired by the Improvised Lives of Elaine May & Mike Nichols” by Beth Kander) and “¡VOS!” by Christina Pumariega.
CATF runs from July 10-Aug. 2 in three venues on the Shepherd University campus: Frank Center, Marinoff Theater, and Studio 112.
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