Art Review—"Vermeer’s Love Letters” at the Frick

Vermeer’s Love Letters

The Frick Collection

1 East 70th Street, New York, NY

Through August 31, 2025

frick.org

The 3 Vermeer paintings at the Frick exhibit 

In 2021, when the Frick Collection began renovating the venerable mansion housing its art and put on display some of its invaluable collection at the nearby Breuer building on Madison Avenue, it seemed the opposite of the Frick’s mission to show its stunning art in its original location, Henry Clay Frick’s ornate home. What worked at the Breuer was that several items—always seen far above or away from visitors—were at eye level and easier to study and admire. However, the sense of a collector arranging his valuable artworks and furnishings where he wanted to place them was lost.

Mistress and Maid

Now, more than four years later, that is no longer the case: the Frick has reopened in its original space, which has been beautifully expanded. It was my first time visiting the upgraded building, so I was able to see what’s been updated as well as view the dazzling new exhibit, Vermeer’s Love Letters, in the new Ronald S. Lauder Exhibition Galleries. 

The enlarged Frick now includes access to rooms on the second floor that were previously off-limits to the public, where there are more paintings and other objects like a collection of medals. It's still satisfying to visit the city’s best small art museum, although it’s less small now.

Vermeer’s Love Letters brings together three of Vermeer’s works—the Frick’s own Mistress and Maid, The Love Letter from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid from Dublin’s National Gallery of Ireland—for a detailed look at how the artist treated the subject of letter writing as well as one of his favorite subjects: women in domestic situations.

Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid 

Exploring this magnificent trio in a single gallery is a once-in-a-lifetime experience—these intimately-scaled works contain so much painterly and poetic detail that they invite the exceptionally close viewing this exhibit allows. (At the press preview, my wife and I were the only ones in the gallery since everyone else was attending a talk in the auditorium, allowing us several precious minutes alone with these exceptional beauties.)

As these paintings show, Vermeer often worked on a small scale, amazingly packing so much aliveness, truth and humanity into his canvases. When looking at Vermeer’s works, you get lost in their singular worlds: what are these women thinking or saying, and what do the precisely placed objects—for example, in the Amsterdam and Dublin pictures, the paintings on the walls behind the women—symbolize? Even the large dark space behind the women in Mistress and Maid speaks volumes. 

The Love Letter

It’s not often one gets the chance to see Vermeer paintings from outside the U.S. Indeed, at the 1995-96 Vermeer exhibition in Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art I attended, 21 of his extant paintings were included, but The Love Letter was not there, so this exhibit is my first time seeing it. Its miniature magnificence is as breathtaking as the other two paintings.

Vermeer’s Love Letters is a small exhibit only in quantity—it’s monumental in every other sense.

Art Review—“Beyond Monet” on Long Island

Beyond Monet

Through January 2, 2024

Samanea New York, 1500 Old Country Road, Westbury, NY

beyondmonet.com

I didn’t expect the first immersive artist show following Beyond Van Gogh on Long Island to spotlight the greatest of the French Impressionists—and forerunner to the abstract expressionism that exploded in the mid-20th century—Claude Monet. But here we are—although, since Beyond Monet alternates in the same space with the ongoing Van Gogh show, it’s likely not nearly as popular.

Similarly to Beyond Van Gogh (and, I would guess, other immersive artist shows), the multimedia Beyond Monet gives viewers a new way of looking at an artist and his—it’s always his—preoccupations, usually by lining up, on the walls of the space, reproductions of paintings that are visually similar, then morphing into other works. Then there’s replicating the “look” of the settings of Monet’s best-known works, like the gardens and water lilies near his home in Giverny, the cathedral in Rouen or London’s Parliament buildings. 

The visual motifs, as in the Van Gogh show, provide a sumptuous array of colors, transforming into other subjects that might or might not look familiar, based on one’s knowledge of Monet’s oeuvre. Ambient music—at times sounding like early ‘70s Pink Floyd—accompanies the show; unlike Van Gogh, there are no voices intoning Monet’s commentaries on art but rather simply the words thrown onto the walls, in the original French and in English translations. As I said in my review of Beyond Van Gogh, there’s a kind of Cliff Notes effect to this visualization of an immortal artist’s life and art, with little immersive sense, so to speak, of Monet’s artistic and historic importance. 

Of course, standing in front of the artist’s actual artworks is always more satisfying, and that also goes for Monet, whose masterly and massive Water Lilies canvases, which take up two galleries of the breathtaking Musée de l’Orangerie  in Paris, along with a large gallery in the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, might be considered some of the first truly immersive paintings.

Unlike the Van Gogh show, Beyond Monet does not include a virtual-reality experience, which makes it somewhat less immersive than it should be. Still, if this sort of thing is up your alley, it's is a pleasant way to spend an hour.

Art Review—“Beyond Van Gogh” on Long Island

Beyond Van Gogh

Through May 14, 2023

Samanea New York, 1500 Old Country Road, Westbury, NY

vangoghlongisland.com

Beyond Van Gogh

I must admit that the prospect of immersing myself in a famous artist’s works has never been appealing; that’s why Beyond Van Gogh—different versions of which have set down roots seemingly everywhere, including in Manhattan recently—became my first such experience when it opened just a 15-minute drive from my home.

My skepticism came about from my familiarity with Van Gogh’s work—I’ve seen hundreds of his paintings in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Kröller-Müller Museum in rural Holland, along with the obvious masterpieces at the Met, MOMA and other collections—and knowing that looking at real artworks is much more satisfying. Still, it must be admitted that the multimedia Beyond Van Gogh is a different way of looking at an artist: visual and thematic connections are shown to viewers through reproductions of several similar paintings—like a lineup of Van Gogh’s famous self-portraits—as well as replicating the atmosphere of the settings of his well-known works, including an outdoor café, a bedroom or wheat fields.

Beyond Van Gogh

Standing in the main room where the action, so to speak, takes place, viewers are surrounded by a riot of colors that morphs from mere sketches to full-blown, and impossibly vibrant, paintings, accompanied by music like instrumental versions of “Here Comes the Sun” and Don MacLean’s “Vincent” as well as voices intoning Van Gogh’s thoughts in his letters to his beloved brother Theo (in both English and French), some of which can be read on the walls. The effect is of a Cliff Notes version of an immortal artist’s life and art: although it doesn’t give the full sense of what makes Van Gogh such a singular artist, it’s certainly a diverting way to spend an hour or so.

Also worth attending at Beyond Van Gogh—for an extra fee—is the virtual-reality A Life in Letters. My first VR experience, it immerses (that word again) viewers in the landscape that the artist immortalized in his paintings and, as one listens to Vincent narrate excerpts from letters to his brother about making art and getting inspiration, one sees (and feels) the seasons flow by; the deep greens, blues, yellows and even winter whites all make vivid appearances. 

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

While wandering around the exhibit, I thought of that memorable segment in Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 omnibus film Dreams, where a man finds himself inside several Van Gogh’s paintings as he tries to find the artist himself (played by a strangely attenuated Martin Scorsese). While I’d prefer to get lost in Kurosawa's film, Beyond van Gogh will do nicely in the meantime.

September '22 Digital Week III

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

The Good House 

(Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) 

Not many actresses are as able to navigate the tricky, even treacherous emotional terrain of Hildy Good, an alcoholic real estate agent with a messy professional and personal life, as Sigourney Weaver, who explores every nuance—even finding some that probably didn’t exist in Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky’s direction or their and Thomas Bezucha’s script. Weaver even makes the problematic bits (like directly addressing the camera) work like a charm; her winning presence makes this equally toughminded and soggy character study a bit of a must-see. She is joined by her long-ago (Dave and The Ice Storm) costar Kevin Kline, who like Weaver is unafraid to display physical and emotional nakedness onscreen. 

The Enforcer 

(Screen Media)

Despite Antonio Banderas’ best efforts, which are typically middling to begin with, Richard Hughes’ improbable drama about the brutal enforcer for the vicious head of the local underworld organization (Kate Bosworth, playing gleefully against type) who suddenly develops a conscience and tries rescuing a teenage girl from sexual exploitation—reminding him of his own young daughter—itself exploits its sexually charged scenario. The blonde Bosworth, here in a black wig, is a hoot as the nasty crime boss, but little else here is very satisfying, unfortunately.

The Last Band on Stage 

(Gravitas Ventures)

The Windy City’s own Joe Mantegna is the perfect narrator for this enjoyable trip through rock band Chicago’s storied history; director Peter Curtis Pardini focuses on the group’s fraught last couple of years after performing a final concert in Las Vegas before COVID shut everything down for more than a year. We see Chicago’s members either adjusting or not to life at home, not making music, not being on the road, and how they eventually get back in physical and mental shape to perform: first on Zoom, then finally at a real concert venue in the Midwest in the summer of 2021. 

Life Is Cheap…But Toilet Paper Is Expensive 

(Arbelos Films)

In Wayne Wang’s disappointingly hit-or-miss black comedy, a man arrives in Hong Kong from san Francisco bearing a suitcase that gangsters have handcuffed to him so he won’t lose it before getting it to another mobster, all while assorted others swirl around him, displaying outlandish and antisocial behavior in explicit visualization of the tongue-in-cheek title. Wang’s 1989 feature has its admirers, and it’s certainly a spirited effort, but it’s loose and ragged, only coming into focus occasionally through the excess violence and crude humor.

Railway Children 

(Blue Fox Entertainment)

The original Railway Children, released in 1970, starred a then-teenage Jenny Agutter as one of the title kids: fast forward to 2022, and Agutter returns as the grandmother of a village family taking in city kids during the bombings of the UK in WWII. Morgan Matthews’ sequel passes nicely enough; it’s too bad, though, that it mainly stays on the surface, rarely delving into the pathos involved for youngsters at such a fraught moment in their lives. Happily, the acting, led by Agutter and various young performers, is superb, which gives the dramatics more urgency.

Ten Tricks 

(Cinedigm)

Richard Pagano’s silly but amusingly adult roundelay introduces a middle-aged madam hoping to have a baby and several of her workers—both female and male—who are dealing with their customers, both successfully and unsuccessfully. Although an ungainly mix of smuttiness, alternatingly stilted and interesting dialogue and even an occasional insight, it gains a measure of stature from the performances, like the outstanding Brittany Ishibashi as one of the call girls and, as the madam, the touchingly vulnerable Lea Thompson—who, nearly four decades after her debut, remains an appealing presence onscreen.

4K/UHD/Blu-ray Release of the Week 

The Lost Boys 

(Warner Bros)

Joel Schumacher’s horror comedy about young vampires terrorizing the fictional California town of Santa Carla is drenched in the year 1987 (the summer it was released), as the guys and gals’ big hair, the synth-laden score and smattering of pop songs by the likes of INXS, Echo and the Bunnyman and Foreigner’s Lou Gramm threaten to overwhelm its genuine smarts and funny/icky vibe. The cast is top-notch: Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann and Bernard Hughes as the elders complement the dynamic young cast of Keifer Sutherland, Jason Patric, the Coreys Haim and Feldman and Jami Gertz. The striking visuals look spectacular on UHD, which includes Schumacher’s commentary, while other extras—retrospective featurettes and interviews, deleted scenes, and Gramm’s video for his tune “Lost in the Shadows”—are on the Blu-ray disc.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Leonard Bernstein Boxed Set 

(C Major)

This five Blu-ray set contains several of Leonard Bernstein’s European concerts from the last years of his life (he died in 1990 at age 72)—the earliest is from 1976, of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, while the rest are from the ‘80s and early 1990, when he led the Vienna Philharmonic in Jean Sibelius’ seventh symphony. These are typically idiosyncratic Bernstein performances, as he remains a whirlwind on the podium, even jumping up and down to punctuate the final notes of the Berlioz, but they’re all worth watching from at least an historical perspective. The fifth disc is a lovely tribute to the composer-conductor, Bernstein at 100, a 2018 concert at Tanglewood’s summer festival in western Massachusetts’ bucolic Berkshires, where the highlights are soprano Nadine Sierra as soloist in Bernstein’s “Kaddish” symphony and mezzo Isabel Leonard singing Maria in excerpts from his West Side Story score. There’s fine hi-def video and audio.

DVD Release of the Week 

Pissarro—Father of Impressionism 

(Seventh Art Productions)

Although not as well-known as other contemporaries such as Renoir and Monet, Camille Pissarro gets a lot of love in this 90-minute documentary about his life and art, as experts from the art world discuss and dissect his importance and legacy. The film follows the straight line of others in the valuable Exhibition on Screen series through narration of his life and glimpses at his art as we hear about how he was thought of by his fellow Impressionists, who named him—unsurprisingly—“the father of impressionism.” 

CD Release of the Week

Valentin Silvestrov—Requiem for Larissa 

(BR Klassik)

84-year-old Valentin Silvestrov’s music earned added currency this year, as Ukraine’s most important living composer fled to Berlin with his daughter and granddaughter when Putin’s Russian forces invaded. But as this new recording of his very personal Requiem for Larissa demonstrates, it’s a work that will remain relevant for its shining excellence and gripping dramatics. Composed between 1997 and 1999, after the sudden death of Silvestrov’s beloved wife, Larissa, this Requiem is quite simply profoundly shattering to listen to. Performed brilliantly by the Munich Radio Orchestra, Choir of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and soloists, all led by conductor Andres Mustonen, this large, formidable, slow-moving cycle of grief is given a greatly sympathetic airing.

July '22 Digital Week I

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Downton Abbey—A New Era 

(Universal)

The second big-screen drama from the popular PBS series plays like the earlier film, as a two-hour episode of the show, but creator-writer Julian Fellowes adds enough wrinkles and variations to make it more enjoyable: there’s a trek to the south of France, where Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) might discover a surprise about his paternity; and the family has allowed a film crew to shoot a silent feature at Downton (it’s 1928) to help fund needed mansion upkeep. The large cast is perfect, as always, with a sardonic Maggie Smith, in her swan song as matriarch Dowager Countess, leading the way. The mansion and its grounds look spectacular in ultra hi-def; extras include on-set featurettes and interviews, along with director Richard Curtis’ chatty commentary.

Edge of Tomorrow 

(Warner Bros)

I doubt I’m  the first to label Doug Liman’s 2014 Tom Cruise vehicle as a sci-fi Groundhog Day: Cruise is part of a conscripted army slated to fight an extraterrestrial invasion force that’s annihilating Earth’s human population, and he must replay the training for the battle with the toughest soldier (played by Emily Blunt). It’s flashily done, and quite exciting at times, but there’s a sense that, even at a lean 110 minutes, it spins its wheels at about the hour mark; Liman, Cruise and Blunt keep pushing until it finally reaches the finish line. There’s an excellent 4K transfer; the accompanying Blu-ray includes the original extras from the initial release: featurettes, interviews and deleted scenes.

Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Dreaming Walls—Inside the Chelsea Hotel 

(Magnolia)

Using an elliptical, visually eccentric style that mirrors the many famous and infamous inhabitants (from Dylan Thomas to  Bob Dylan) of the hallowed Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, directors Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt have created an impressionistic, dream-like documentary about an indelible part of 20th century arts and pop culture. We also hear from several current residents, who are dealing with the hotel renovations going on through amusing interactions with some of the workers. It all adds up to a lovely if melancholic journey through ghosts of the past and present.

Fair Game 

(Dark Star Pictures)

This 1986 action flick harkens back to the exploitative B movies of the ‘70s like Jackson County Jail and Gator Bait, as a young woman must handle a trio of brutish male attackers, showing her wiles (and curves) as she does. Director Mario Andreacchio, in his feature debut, has made a sleazy, silly adventure that displays the charms of leading lady Cassandra Delaney, who does the usual risible genre things but manages to fend off the men, who are even dumber than she. That Quentin Tarantino loves this movie tells you all you need to know about his taste.

Hallelujah—Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song 

(Sony Classics)

Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” has become a sort of all-purpose hymn, sung at memorials for everyone from celebrities and politicians to mass shooting victims—but, as directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine demonstrate in this intriguing biography, the song is just one part of Cohen’s long artistic journey. By following Cohen’s life and career, Hallelujah becomes a lot more than just an exploration of a single song, and that is the filmmakers’ finest achievement, using archival interviews with Cohen over decades as well as with friends, colleagues and to present a full-bodied portrait.

Monsieur Hire 

(Cohen Film Collection)

Another elegant, tense character study by French director Patrice Leconte, this 1989 chamber drama, based on a story by the great Belgian writer Georges Simenon, follows a loner who spies on his attractive female neighbor later finding himself a suspect in the murder of another young woman. With Leconte’s stylish direction and sublime acting by Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire, you nearly forget that this minutely detailed film is just a 79-minute shaggy-dog story that hinges on an implausible plot point. Here's hoping that we also get re-releases of Leconte’s dazzling followup features, The Hairdresser’s Husband and The Perfume of Yvonne.

Rubikon 

(IFC Midnight)

It’s the year 2056, and the earth has suddenly become largely uninhabitable due to a toxic fog, and those onboard an orbiting space station must decide whether to return and search for survivors or stay onboard and safe. Director Magdalena Lauritsch and her cowriter Jessica Lind set up their ambitious but derivative sci-fi adventure nicely, but although the characters populating the movie are interestingly differentiated (and well-acted by the cast), there’s soon nowhere to go—literally and figuratively. 

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Monstrous 

(Screen Media)

In Chris Sivertson’s tantalizing but ultimately frustrating horror flick, Christina Ricci beautifully gives it her all as a woman who, escaping an abusive husband, takes her young son to try and start a new life—but the monster her son sees, and her own unsettling visions, make her question whether she can. Siverton and writer Carol Chrest have made an unusually intimate thriller that measures a woman’s instability in the face of grief but too often takes half-measures that are only intermittently powerful—and the ending is easily guessed by anyone who’s seen similar movies. The film looks superb on Blu.

DVD Release of the Week 

Summers with Picasso 

(Icarus Films)

This disc pairs documentaries about Pablo Picasso in the south of France, where he spent summers with famous and not so famous friends, fellow artists and his muses: Francois Levy-Kuentz’s On the French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso recounts a 1937 trip to Mougins, and Christian Tran’s Picasso and Sima, Antibes, 1946 is set in another resort town nine years later. Both films give rare glimpses of Picasso that are unusually intimate, a mixture of artistry and frivolity, with sympathetic portraits of mistresses Dora Maar (in 1937) and Francoise Gilot (who is interviewed for the Antibes film). There’s a plethora of stunning vintage photos, home movies and—most importantly—glimpses of colorful art. The lone extra is Guernica, Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens’ 1949 short about Picasso’s incendiary painting, also available on an Icarus Blu-ray with other Resnais shorts.

CD Releases of the Week

Boundless—Pablo Barragan and Sophie Pacini

(SWR2)

Spanish clarinetist Pablo Barragán and German pianist Sophie Pacini join forces for an illuminating, often exhilarating journey through 20th century chamber music. Each composer made the genre his own, from Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy 1941-2 work and Mieczysław Weinberg’s klezmer-inflected 1945 sonata to Francois Poulenc’s elegant, witty 1964 entry. Sergei Prokofiev’s 1943 flute sonata—transcribed for clarinet by Barragán and Kent Kennan—is filled with the great Soviet composer’s inventiveness and memorable melodies. Unsurprisingly, Barragán and Pacini sound spectacular together, both of them obviously at home in this music.

Coleridge-Taylor—Chamber Works 

(Chandos)

Finally published nearly a century after the composer’s untimely death at age 37 from pneumonia, these chamber works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor were written in 1893-94 while he was a student at the Royal College of Music in London. All three works—a piano trio, a piano quintet, and a nonet for piano, strings and winds that’s subtitled ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’—are indebted to Brahms and Schumann, but are no less attractive for that. They are performed with vigor and warmth by members of the versatile Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, bringing their most charming musical qualities to the fore.

Art Review—"Cézanne Drawing" at MOMA

Cézanne Drawing

Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY

Through September 25, 2021

moma.org

For its first post-pandemic blockbuster exhibition, the Museum of Modern Art chose an obvious name: French post-impressionist Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). But this isn’t the usual audience-pleaser: although Cézanne Drawing includes a handful of oil paintings—including one of the artist’s most famous, The Bather, from MOMA’s own collection—many of these works, from other institutions and private collections, are decidedly not among his most familiar.

But this isn’t to say the exhibit is second-rate: just the opposite, in fact. Cézanne Drawing is as revelatory as the comprehensive exhibit I saw in Philadelphia in 1996 by putting into context Cézanne’s entire output: these drawings—some mere sketches or just a few lines in pencil, while others beautifully realized watercolors—become the backbone of his entire oeuvre. 

Of course, one can’t help but recognize familiar images throughout: still lifes of fruit and various objects (left) or a colorful sketch, The Bathers, which is brighter, more impressionistic than the rather muted finished painting. There are many lovely portraits and landscapes, all the more interesting when there’s a series, since one can see Cézanne working out what he wants to accentuate, as in several sketches of Mount Sainte Victoire, which the artist could see from his window. 

Best of all are dazzling drawings like The Apotheosis of Delacroix (right), in which one great artist pays homage to another, as astonishing in its complexity as the finished canvas at London’s National Gallery. And there’s the seemingly offhand sketch of a plaster Cupid, endlessly charming and alive.

This exhibit, crammed with hundreds of artworks that some might consider lesser, or even inferior, is so full of the life, emotion, idiosyncrasies and vigor we associate with Cézanne that it truly earns the label “can’t-miss.”

The Frick Collection on Display at Frick Madison

Frick Madison

945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY

frick.org

When the Frick Collection announced its intention to shutter and renovate the venerable mansion housing its art and display some of its invaluable collection at the nearby Breuer building—longtime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art and most recently a satellite home of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s special exhibits—it seemed the opposite of what the Frick stands for: stunning art in a beautiful location to house it all.

Frick Madison

Would that balance between what’s inside and the building itself be lost with the move to Frick Madison? Or would the new surroundings provide a chance to look at familiar artworks in a new way? The answer, unsurprisingly, is both. 

To start with the cavils: those gloriously pleasurable rooms in which the masterly series of paintings by Fragonard and Boucher reside are gone; although the dazzling Boucher quartet, The Four Seasons, remains together in the new digs, the same cannot be said for the 14 wondrous Fragonard paintings making up The Progress of Love. In the original Frick mansion, the four lovely large works and the ten smaller ones create a harmonious whole. Here, they are on the walls of two unrelated rooms, which lessens their impact.

Still, for every missed opportunity, other changes work nicely. The life-size Renoir portrait, La Promenade, always seemed out of reach in its original place, in an alcove under a set of stairs behind a rope barring visitors from getting near it. Here, it’s right in front of us, in all its radiant glory. That’s what’s best about the collection on view at the Breuer: several works are no longer in their usual places above or away from visitors and are now at eye level, easier to study and admire. 

The Frick's three Vermeers

Similarly, reorganizing the artworks was necessary, so now there’s a room containing only the Frick’s peerless trio of Vermeers, and another has four Goyas—three brilliant portraits and the astonishing The Forge—lined up together; the many Van Dycks and Rembrandts get rooms of their own. It’s useful to see one artist’s works in a single space, even if the sense of an art collector arranging his valuable works and furnishings where he wanted to place them is, regrettably, lost.

Bellini's St. Francis in the Desert

Lastly, it’s illuminating to see Holbein’s great portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell right in front of us, making it easier to discover subtleties in the brushstrokes; and—most memorably—the only room with a single painting: Bellini’s gorgeous St. Francis in the Desert, which was restored several years ago and now, taken down off the wall in Frick’s original living room, can be studied intensely as one marvels at such an imposing work of art that remains eminently graspable. This is where one must mention the lighting at the Breuer, which allows for better viewing of certain paintings than the original Frick mansion does.  

I don’t want the Frick Collection ensconced at the Breuer forever—it’s slated for a couple years—but this welcome diversion is a satisfying way to visit old, familiar friends.

Weekend in the Berkshires—The Clark, The Mount, Barrington Stage Company & Tanglewood

Clark Art Institute

Williamstown, Massachusetts

clarkart.edu

The Mount

Lenox, Massachusetts

edithwharton.org

The Royal Family of Broadway

The Cake

Barrington Stage Company, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

barringtonstageco.org

On the Town

Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts

bso.org

There’s no better summer jaunt than western Massachusetts’ bucolic Berkshires, especially since it’s just three or so hours from Manhattan. It’s easy to cram a lot into a whirlwind weekend: music at Tanglewood, new musical and play at the Barrington Stage Company, tour of novelist Edith Wharton’s century-old mansion, The Mount, and a visit to the world-renowned and—since our last visit—beautifully expanded Clark Art Institute.

Let’s start from the top…literally. Williamstown, only minutes from the Vermont border, is home to Williams College and boasts the Clark Art Institute, whose original white marble building houses one of the best small-museum collections in the country, including one of the largest number of Renoirs outside of France.

The Clark’s expansion four years ago brought about the modern and sleek Clark Center, which features lots of new exhibition space. Currently, through September are two French-related exhibits. The Art of Iron brings a few dozen pieces of exquisitely wrought ironworks from the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles in Rouen. Seeing them out of the context of the Musée’s gothic church housing the collection was initially jarring (we visited it in Rouen in 2009), but the works are so marvelously detailed that they keep their luster in their new digs.

Berthe Morisot's The Sisters at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown

Even more impressive is Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900, which not only brought out the usual suspects like Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot (whose The Sisters is a stunning portrait), but also other European and American painters who worked with acute sensitivity on subject matter ranging from mothers and children to history and landscapes. 

If the Clark is a must-see Berkshires attraction, so is the grounds and house encompassing The Mount in Lenox, especially on a warm summer day when one can stroll the lovely manicured gardens as well as tour the mansion which Wharton and her husband called home for the first decade of the 1900s. (That their marriage ended badly and Edith lived most of the rest of her life in Paris doesn’t take away from the place’s genuine serenity.) 

Edith Wharton's The Mount in Lenox (photo: Kevin Filipski)

During a Sunday-only Backstairs Tour, visitors experience the house as it was while the Whartons lived there: interpreters portray people in their employ like the cook, butler and Edith’s own governess and lifelong confidant, who each provide enlightening accounts of what it was like to work for the Mount’s most famous residents.

Pittsfield—about halfway between Lenox and Williamstown—is home to the Barrington Stage Company. While there, we caught two shows at the company’s two stages: the new musical The Royal Family of Broadway by veteran composer William Finn, and a topical new play by This Is Us producer Bekah Brunstetter, The Cake.

The cast of Barrington Stage Company's The Royal Family of Broadway (photo: Daniel Rader)

An overly frenetic attempt at an old-fashioned entertainment, The Royal Family of Broadway (based on George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s 1927 play The Royal Family) is certainly entertaining, even if its “fun” quotient peters out before its two-hour running time ends. Finn’s songs are tuneful if spotty, John Rando’s direction and Joshua Bergasse’s choreography consist of as much onstage busyness onstage as simultaneously possible, and the cast—led by Harriet Harris’s hilarious theatrical matriarch, Laura Michelle Kelly’s lovely-voiced daughter and the indefatigable Will Swenson’s scene-stealing Barrymore-esque son—gives the show enough fuel to soldier on while spending its time down in the dumps of easy jokes and cackling pastiche.

Debra Jo Rapp (left) in Barrington Stage Company's The Cake (photo: Carolyn Brown)

The Cake is set in North Carolina, where an ultra-religious baker who’s a whiz at cakes wrestles with the dilemma of baking the wedding cake for her late best friend’s beloved daughter, who is marrying a black, liberal, foul-mouthed atheist woman from Brooklyn. Brunstetter’s play is as blunt as it sounds, with an occasional nugget of insight to go along with funny lines and a final cop-out. Serious and deep it’s not, but The Cake—helped by an hilarious lead performance by Debra Jo Rupp—may make a dent with audiences that something more reasoned and subtle would not. 

Barrington Stage Company’s summer season includes an August run of West Side Story, de rigeur for the Leonard Bernstein Centennial year. Tanglewood—that glorious Lenox outdoor venue—is also hosting its own series of Bernstein-related events; after all, he taught and performed there for half a century. The culminating event, an August 25 gala concert featuring singers Susan Graham, Audra MacDonald, Isabel Leonard and Nadine Sierra in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, will be broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances December 28.)

The sailors of Tanglewood's On the Town (photo: Hilary Scott)

We caught a wonderful concert version of Bernstein’s first stage work, the still-delightful 1944 musical On the Town, crammed with hummable tunes, amusing if sometimes dated dialogue and book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Kathleen Marshall’s zesty direction and choreography did wonders on the Shed’s smallish stage space, Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops swung deliciously in Bernstein’s classic songs, and the cast was unbeatable. The three sailors (Brandon Victor Dixon, Christian Dante White and Andy Karl) were a delight; Andrea Martin was funny as soon as she stepped onstage; Georgina Pazcoguin, a remarkably agile dancer and performer, was a highlight of the last Broadway production; Marc Kudisch perfectly juggled even the most cringeworthy bits; and Laura Osnes never sounded lovelier as Claire, especially in her signature duet, “Carried Away,” with the equally charming Karl.

It was a very special night of singing, dancing and Bernstein in the Berkshires.

July '18 Digital Week I

Blu-rays of the Week 

The Virgin Spring 
(Criterion)

Ingmar Bergman’s classic 1960 chamber film is a stark drama based on a medieval folk tale about a young woman whose rape-murder prompts a fresh-water spring to appear where she was killed. Somber and brutal, but in Bergman’s masterly hands, it’s also an intelligent and perceptive look at guilt and revenge, with the usual forceful acting by such superlative Swedes as Max von Sydow, Gunnel Lindblom and Birgitta Pettersson. The new Criterion hi-def transfer makes Sven Nykvist’s B&W photography even more transfixing; extras are a commentary, Ang Lee intro, 2005 interviews with Lindblom and Pettersson and a 1975 Bergman audio interview.

La Campana Sommersa/The Sunken Bell 
(Naxos)

Italian master Ottorino Respighi composed his dramatically diffuse but musically succulent opera in 1927, and like his other stage works, it’s rarely performed; happily, this 2016 Cagliari (Italy) production lets us reevaluate the stageworthiness of one of his most beautiful scores. Conducted by Donato Denzetti, who superbly leads the Cagliari Theater orchestra and chorus, this bizarre, surreal work has exemplary lead performances and attractive colors in the music and Pier Francisco Maestrini’s staging. The hi-def audio and video are excellent.

Lucio Silia 

(BelAir Classiques)

One of Mozart’s earliest operas to keep a tenuous hold in the repertoire is this tragic historical drama set during the Roman Empire. In his elegant 2017 Madrid production, director Claus Guth keeps things moving with studied elegance, which helps the musty plot keep its hold on viewers. Conductor Ivor Bolton impressively leads the Teatro Real orchestra and chorus, and the top-notch performers are led by Patricia Petibon, a fiery soprano who sings eloquently and acts with sheer verve. The hi-def video and audio are also impressive.

Superfly
(Warner Archive)

Gordon Parks Jr.’s 1972 blaxploitation classic is definitely of its era, set in a rundown Harlem where a drug dealer looks for one last score so he can retire. Despite (because of?) its un-P.C. rawness, it works handily, thanks to Ron O’Neal in the lead and Sheila Frazier as his faithful girlfriend. On the soundtrack is Curtis Mayfield’s classic soul—Mayfield and his band even have a scintillating club performance cameo. A grainy period look dominates on Blu-ray; extras are a commentary, interviews and retrospective making-of documentary.

Titus Andronicus 

(Opus Arte)

Often considered Shakespeare’s worst play, this early effort has more eyes-look-away gore and gruesome imagery than his other works combined; still, it usually provides a visceral jolt in the theater, as Blanche McIntyre’s 2017 modern-dress production from the Royal Shakespeare Company shows. The lopping off of limbs, tongues and heads and the cannibalistic pies remain, but the modern dress contrasts jarringly with such brutal goings-on. Of the actors, Hannah Morrish keeps her dignity as the unfortunate Lavinia and David Troughton makes a stentorian Titus, but the juiciest parts—evil queen Tamora and even more evil moor Aaron—are played indifferently by Nia Gwynne and Stefan Adegbola. The Blu-ray has solid hi-def video and audio; extras are McIntyre’s commentary, cast and crew interviews.

Tommy Shaw—Sing for the Day 
(Eagle Rock)

The Styx guitarist and singer performed with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra in Cleveland in 2016 and the infectiousness is there in the kids’ smiles as they play instruments and sing backup to Shaw and his acoustic (and occasional electric) guitar. Shaw, at age 63, is in fantastically good voice: he hits all the notes on Styx staples “Fooling Yourself,” “Boat on the River,” “Sing for the Day,” “Man in the Wilderness” and “Renegade,” and he even throws in non-Styx tunes like “Girls with Guns” and “High Enough.” Both hi-def audio and video are first-rate; lone extra is audio of four additional songs.

Tristan und Isolde 

(Unitel/C Major)

This 1981 concert of Richard Wagner’s mournfully romantic opera has Leonard Bernstein (this release commemorates the 100th anniversary of his birth) leading the Bayerischen Rundfunks orchestra and chorus in a gripping performance. If Peter Hoffman’s Tristan lacks depth and weight, Hildegard Behrens’ Isolde is the real deal, saving her most powerful singing for the finale (which is when we want it). It’s not perfect, but it’s typical of Bernstein’s impassioned performances, when he is sweating bullets by the end. The hi-def video and audio are acceptable enough, considering the aged source material.

2 Weeks in Another Town 
(Warner Archive)

Another Hollywood behind-the-scenes exposé from director Vincente Minnelli and star Kirk Douglas (following 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful), this 1962 drama moves the action to Rome for an intermittently absorbing exploration of backstabbing on and off the set. Kirk Douglas does well as the has-been star intent on making a comeback, and then-ingenue Daliah Lavi is a delight as the young actress he falls for, but veterans like Cyd Cherisse, Edward G. Robinson and James Gregory aren’t given a chance to do much with their hollow characters. The widescreen hi-def transfer looks sumptuous.

DVDs of the Week 

Cezanne: Portraits of a Life 
(Seventh Art Productions)

Narrated by Brian Cox, this informative and visually stunning overview of Cezanne’s life and art—with particular emphasis on the Cezanne Portraits exhibition that closes this weekend at Washington’s National Gallery of Art—is a solid appreciation of one of the 20th century’s most important (and still misunderstood) artists. As always with these Exhibition on Screen entries, the visuals are entrancing—and disappointing: the back cover touts this as being shot in 4K, but that this is only available on DVD defeats the purpose of shooting it in ultra hi-def.

Ismael’s Ghosts 
(Magnolia)

The latest from French director Arnaud Desplechin—whose films are so crammed with detail, incident, characterization and location that they resemble cinematic versions of long novels—centers on a director making a film about his estranged (and politically shady) brother, and brilliantly and effortlessly moves along separate but equally absorbing paths, both real and fake. The intrigue is especially delicious served up by a formidable cast headed by Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg—who gives what may be her best screen performance as our hero’s current love. It’s just too bad that such a rich, rewarding and rewatchable film is only available on DVD. Isn’t it 2018?