ARCHITECTURE, DISPATCHES ART, MUSIC, ARCHITECTURE, FILM, SHOPPING, NEWS AND THINGS TO MAKE AND DO… ART, MUSIC, ARCHITECTURE, FILM, SHOPPING, NEWS AND THINGS TO MAKE AND DO…
Alright on the night
The glitterati aren’t wont To say that there was
to wait for most things in something Brechtian about
life, but on a recent brisk the whole affair was to
New York night, a line that acknowledge that the actors
included Lou Reed, Miuccia never successfully transcended
Prada, Uma Thurman and Owen His seated reading of their star-wattage (probably
and Luke Wilson dug in its Pirandello’s play about the Vezzoli’s intent), and
heels outside the Guggenheim provincial rumour-mongering that the acoustics of the
Museum for a full 45 minutes, surrounding a mysteriously Guggenheim were terrible
in expectation of what housebound woman extrapolated (probably not). On the higher
Performa director RoseLee a contemporary portrait of floors, where sounds all but
Goldberg promised would be celebrity worship, served settled into a hazy ambience,
a sizeable payoff – a one- up by those who know the many spectators seemed
night-only performance of subject best: Natalie Portman, content to use the museum’s
Luigi Pirandello’s 1917 Peter Sarsgaard and Ellen complimentary binoculars in
Right You Are (If You Think Burstyn among them. Lines the service of sating their
You Are), staged by artist were delivered in a quick, opera-house fantasies, while
Francesco Vezzoli. To some, sufficiently emotive fashion, others, tired of standing in
the fact that the production though some of the actors felt their finery, just plain left.
was the Italian charmer’s the need to compensate for the Reconnaissance soon devolved
first theatrical effort was lack of a proper stage with into celebrity-spotting
justification enough for far too much gesticulation. – Gagosian here, Olsen urchin
the wait: Vezzoli’s past Cate Blanchett appeared at there – and one had to wonder
films were the hot tickets the play’s end as the much- whether this architecture of
at the 2006 Whitney Biennial discussed woman, descending fashionable voyeurism actually
and 2007 Venice Biennale, through the coiled hallways bested Vezzoli’s production,
aping contemporary culture’s of the Gugg in an otherworldly or whether it was merely an
obsession with production Galliano number and calling extension of it. Tyler Coburn
budgets and celebrity cameos to mind past riffs on the
to inject Hollywood-size museum’s psycho-architectural PERFORMA 07 COMMISSION,
glamour into art-size locales. downward spiral, like Julia
FRANCESCO VEzzOLI, CoSI’
Whatever you think of Vezzoli, Stiles’s Ophelia meltdown in
e (Se vI pARe) oR RIgHT
it’s difficult not to Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet
You ARe (If You THInk You
ARe), 27 OCTOBER 2007, AT
recognise his showmanship. (2000). Most surprisingly,
THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM
a mum Anita Ekberg sat in the
MUSEUM, NEW YORK
wings on a replica of Dalí’s
Mae West Lips Sofa (1937),
billed and spotlit for no
apparent reason other than her
Performance of Francesco Vezzoli’s
sheer fabulousness – reason
Cosi’ e (Se vi pare) or Right
enough, arguably, for Vezzoli. You Are (If You Think You Are),
27 October 2007. Photo: Paula Court.
Courtesy Performa, the Guggenheim,
Gagosian Gallery
Artreview 28
Dispatches_DEC.indd 28 6/11/07 12:26:34
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