2013-05-21T03:44:29-04:00 Barbara Isenberg http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=barbara-isenberg Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Barbara Isenberg Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1210949 2012-01-20T19:00:00-05:00 2012-03-21T05:12:01-04:00

Barbara Isenberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-isenberg/
That's about as far as we get before a Hockney assistant barges into the room: Hockney needs to go upstairs right away and approve the placement of a gallery wall. "Come on," says the 74-year-old artist, bounding up an endless flight of stairs to the galleries. We walk through the guarded doors to a warren of large rooms where more than a dozen people are painting walls, hanging paintings, waiting for instruction. Hockney approves the new wall, then moves purposefully through the rest of the place.

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, has been planned since 2007, and will fill all of the venerable museum's main galleries. There are paintings, photocollages, drawings and sketch books that go back 50 years, but most of the artwork in the show is far more recent. Besides earlier landscapes of woods and hills in his native Yorkshire, he has created more grand, colorful, multi-canvas landscapes specifically for the huge Royal Academy walls. It was only last October, in fact, that he was in Yosemite making drawings on his ubiquitous iPad, and those drawings have been enlarged and beautifully printed for the exhibition.

The very first copy of the show's catalogue has arrived, and reviewing it is next on Hockney's agenda. To keep me occupied as he does so, he pulls his iPad out of the specially made pocket of his grey suit jacket and sets it up on a table. Within seconds, nine frames depicting an English country road in winter fill the Ipad screen. I start to write something in my notebook, and he stops me. "No. Look. It is changing seasons fast," he calls out. "Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter again."

His newest way of seeing everything ahead at once, the high-definition video projections seem a natural progression from his earlier photographic collages, and particularly his monumental Pearblossom Hwy., a 1986 collage of over 700 photographic prints assembled to depict a California desert highway. The eye sees a lot more than just what's directly in front of you, he explains. These images look at life the way he thinks it should be seen.

He will replicate this video of the four seasons, edited to less than 10 minutes, on much larger screens for museum visitors. I had received a preview last year when I visited him in Bridlington, a seaside town in Yorkshire 60 miles from where he was born and where he spends most of his time these days. We drove along that snow-covered country road, next returning home to view earlier footage of the same road, shot by nine small high-definition cameras carefully mounted to a jeep. We watched them on nine attached video screens set up in the onetime attic studio he's converted to a screening room for invited guests willing to make the four hour trek to Bridlington from London.

The four seasons footage of country landscapes will be paired at the museum with his latest drawing on film: seven minutes worth of stretches, ballet and tap from members of the Royal Ballet he invited up to his mammoth Bridlington studio a few months ago. Dancers appear to skip across an 18-frame screen doing ballet and tap to piano music in what he's now calling Bridliewood, [a counter to his now rarely-visited Hollywood Hills home, aka Hollyton.]

The exhibition culminates a long journey for Hockney. He's made en plein air multi-canvas paintings in the English countryside for several years now, and tested his notion of filling the Royal Academy halls back in August, 2007. That summer, his 50-panel Bigger Trees Near Warter , which was 15 by 40 feet, was hung on an Academy wall for its summer exhibition and later joined on nearby walls by digitally-created photo reproductions on the same scale. Colleagues documented the process of mounting the giant works, netting a blueprint for the real thing.

"These rooms are magnificent," he told me when he returned. "They are the best rooms for showing paintings in London. They're as grand as anything in Paris or Rome. And they're open -- the Royal Academy doesn't have a permanent collection. But they would never have offered this show without my putting this on [in 2007] and proving I could do it."

Time's up, he indicates, slipping on his grey overcoat and beret. Bundled up against the bitter cold, he and a friend walk out to Piccadilly, hail a cab, climb in and speed away.

Barbara Isenberg has been writing about the arts for three decades and about David Hockney for nearly as long. She is the author, most recently, of Conversations with Frank Gehry (Knopf, 2009). ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.841548 2011-03-28T14:37:28-04:00 2011-05-28T05:12:01-04:00

Barbara Isenberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-isenberg/ Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed credited Fleischmann with transforming "a provincial second-rank orchestra into one of the world's best."

Few would dispute his achievements as the city's cultural leaders prepare to again honor Fleischmann, who died June 13, 2010 at 85. Set for Tuesday are both the city's naming of Ernest Fleischmann Square near the Music Center at 1pm and a free Los Angeles Philharmonic tribute concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall at 8pm. On the podium will be maestros he admired conducting the new music he championed.

Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany on December 7, 1924, Fleischmann was raised in South Africa where he received degrees in both accounting and music. He played piano as a child and was a music critic and professional conductor in his teens. But he soon channeled those passions toward the music others made and by 1959 was general manager of the London Symphony Orchestra. Determined to turn the flailing LSO into one of the world's top orchestras, he had done exactly that by the time he left in the late 1960s.

Fleischmann came to Los Angeles in 1969 at the invitation of the orchestra's then-music director Zubin Mehta, primed to do unto the Los Angeles Philharmonic what he'd already succeeded in doing at the London Symphony Orchestra. With encouragement from Mehta, Fleischmann worked at augmenting the orchestra's reputation, improving its solvency and making it more relevant in the larger cultural community. In Los Angeles, as in London, Fleischmann sought out the best guest conductors and artists he could, many of whom he'd been courting for years. Luminaries like Lorin Maazel, Pierre Boulez and Carlo Maria Giulini were soon heading west as guest conductors.

When Mehta left in 1978 to become music director of the New York Philharmonic, he was succeeded by the much-admired Giulini, whose appointment Fleischmann felt acknowledged the orchestra's growing status. Fleischmann was often accused of relentlessness in getting what he wanted--which he nearly always did get--and the impresario was less successful working with Giulini's successor, Andre Previn. Among other things, Fleischmann was so taken with the work of newcomer Esa-Pekka Salonen, he made guest conducting and other promises to the young Finnish composer/conductor without first consulting an infuriated Previn.

Previn's departure eventually cleared the way for Salonen's arrival in 1992. With Salonen, as with Mehta, Fleischmann found a partner compatible with his interests and aspirations. Mehta always wanted a real home dedicated to the Philharmonic, not a hall shared with the opera and the Academy Awards, and the architect Frank Gehry was already well into designing Disney Hall when Salonen arrived. Even while he was still working in Stockholm, Salonen was an integral part of the new hall's development.

At a press event held in 1990 to announce the appointment of director Peter Sellars as Philharmonic "creative consultant," Fleischmann opened his remarks by saying that orchestras were in trouble partly because they'd become dull, boring and repetitive. With young artists like Sellars and Salonen at his side, he promised, the Los Angeles Philharmonic would continue to change all that.

They were an odd-looking trio, the Old World Fleischman, eccentric-looking Sellars and reserved Salonen, but the three men shared desires to get new and younger concertgoers into the hall, encourage new music and extend the orchestra's outreach to the city's many ethnic communities. By the time Salonen left in 2009, concluding the longest tenure of any Los Angeles Philharmonic music director, the orchestra had introduced more than 200 new musical works to Los Angeles audiences and gone on nearly two dozen national and international tours.

With one music director after another, Fleischmann extended the orchestra's reach musically, financially and geographically. He increased recordings and broadcasting opportunities, expanded the Hollywood Bowl's programming and profits, took the orchestra out into the community through in-school programs and free neighborhood concerts, and founded the Philharmonic's New Music Group. The orchestra's many collaborations with Boulez, who is expected to conduct at Tuesday's performance, date back to 1969.

Fleischmann was artistic director of the Ojai Music Festival for several years after leaving the Philharmonic, but his continuing discoveries of new talent ranged far beyond Ojai. It was as a juror at a German conducting competition in 2004 that Fleischmann first encountered the magnetic young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who went on to win the competition, perform with the Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl the following year, and become the Philharmonic's 11th music director. Fleischmann was also a great fan of his successor, Deborah Borda, and one could sense his nostalgia as Borda nurtured the work of first Salonen, then Dudamel.

At a private memorial last year for family and friends, Martin Fleischmann observed that his father's mantra was "expect nothing and be pleasantly surprised." But, the son added, Ernest Fleischmann "made those surprises happen."

Barbara Isenberg is the author of "Conversations with Frank Gehry" and a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.634112 2010-07-03T23:51:04-04:00 2011-05-25T16:55:19-04:00

Barbara Isenberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-isenberg/ Vanity Fair. Previewing its August issue, the magazine's website just reported that its poll of 52 architectural experts, including 11 Pritzker Prize winners, found Bilbao the most important piece of architecture built since 1980.

After more than 20 years of interviewing Gehry for newspapers, magazines and books, I could only imagine his satisfaction at this latest accolade. Long accepted more by artists than by his architectural colleagues, a younger Gehry even titled a lecture, "I'm Not Weird." Gehry's wildly original house, the one some of his Santa Monica, California neighbors originally called an eyesore, has had so much tourist traffic over the years that the architect once quipped to me that he wished he'd sold popcorn there.

When I asked him a few years ago about the impact of the Bilbao commission on his career, the 81-year-old architect told me quite simply, "I guess it did put the city of Bilbao on the map, and I guess it put me on the map. After Bilbao, better projects were coming in. I'm sure it's true that it was a turning point, but I don't relate to it like that. From my perspective it's all hard.

"Even when a building is finished, it feels precarious to me. Since it doesn't really look like something else I've seen, I worry that it's some kind of bizarre thing. I feel self-conscious about it, and I want to hide. I want to crawl under the blankets. When I saw Bilbao for the first time, I said, "oh, my God, what have I done to these people?'





Something good, actually. Determined to make culture a major part of transforming the industrial city of Bilbao, the Guggenheim's Spanish partners were after not just a world-class museum but a beacon, a catalyst for change and much more. "Frank Gehry had to turn our industrial site into an urban space, accessible and welcome to visitors," Guggenheim Bilbao's longtime director Juan Ignacio Vidarte told me when I visited there. "We told him we wanted a museum that would show a 100-ton sculpture and a watercolor at the same time and each at its best."

That's not all. They also wanted him to provide the city with what Vidarte calls "a visual identity," creating something that would do unto Bilbao what the Sydney Opera House did unto Sydney. In my book, Conversations with Frank Gehry, published last year by Knopf, I quote Gehry saying they actually told him just that--they wanted a Sydney Opera House. And what was his reply? "I said, "Well, that's a big order. I can't guarantee anything like that. But I'll do my best."

Gehry's "best" has since hosted more than 10 million museum visitors, many of them visiting Bilbao for the first time, as well as nearly 90 exhibitions. Within a few years, the 100-year-old Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao had to expand to handle all its new visitors, and construction was booming all over town. Basque government officials have reported millions of Euros in Bilbao tourism generated by the new museum, including more than 300 million Euros last year alone.




I reached Gehry in Paris, where he is working on a project, and asked him his reaction to this newest nod from his peers. "What I'm proudest of is that it works as an art museum," Gehry told me earlier today. "The artists I respect love it, and it turned out to be a good investment for the client. It was built on budget--actually, slightly under budget--and it's paid off like mad.

"I always feel it could have been better, and I see things I would have done differently. But I was happy about this. It was unexpected--and I didn't vote for myself."


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Barbara Isenberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-isenberg/ Phaedra, I miss the real thing. I want to be at the National Theater in London, watching and listening to extraordinary actors live, onstage. I want to leaf through new British literature at its bookshop, stroll through lobbies entertained by pianists and violinists, and queue up for fabulous ice creams at intermission.

Every year, I go to London to get my theater fix. It's relatively easy for me because for 25 years now, I have hosted a London theater tour over the New Year's holiday. My small group of fellow theater lovers in tow, I hit six shows in eight days, and it never seems too much. Not with the sorts of shows that London theaters have been mounting for as long as I can remember.

As far back as the 1986-87 season, my group and I saw the original production of The Phantom of the Opera, and, over the years, of Miss Saigon, The Madness of George III, Sunset Boulevard and Stephen Daldry's terrific revival of An Inspector Calls. More recently, we saw the first incarnations of Mamma Mia!, The History Boys, Frost/Nixon, Rock' n' Roll, and Billy Elliot The Musical.

One after another of these shows cross the Atlantic, landing on Broadway and, often, Los Angeles and elsewhere. But they never seem quite the same to me. Times Square is too crowded, and the Music Center complex isn't crowded enough. I long to walk along the Thames a little before heading into the National Theater, or to amble through Covent Garden before turning into the Donmar Warehouse. I want to enjoy the newest writing from David Hare, Tom Stoppard, Alan Ayckbourn and Alan Bennett right away, with the original cast, in its first staging. Ditto whatever new dance theater piece has just been crafted by Matthew Bourne.

This December, for instance, I've already booked the upcoming Donmar Warehouse production of screenwriter John Logan's new play, Red, which stars Alfred Molina as artist Mark Rothko. To keep up with the latest wrinkle in London musicals, I'll be in the audience for the popular Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, based on the film. And, at the National, I'm looking forward to Nation, based on Terry Pratchett's recent novel. Following such successes as His Dark Materials, Coram Boy and War Horse, Nation continues the National's efforts to transform fantasy and adventure novels into engrossing theater, this time adapting Pratchett's tale of two teens building a new world after a tsunami.

Should all go according to plan, Nation would be the third National Theater production later bound for the world's movie houses. But I don't intend to wait for that. In just a few months, I'll be London-bound once again, ready and eager for theatrical alchemy -- as it happens.
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Barbara Isenberg http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-isenberg/
Our onstage chat sessions follow the publication of my new book, Conversations with Frank Gehry, published by Knopf in late April. Gehry essentially initiated the book in December, 2004, when at age 75, he'd been thinking about his legacy and approached me about working with him on an oral history. Having enjoyed our many interviews in the past for assorted newspapers, magazine and books, I was very interested, and what began as an oral history soon developed into Conversations with Frank Gehry.

On and off for these many years, Gehry and I have been talking about his early years in Toronto, his move to Los Angeles at 17 with his family, and the architects, artists and others who influenced or inspired him. Most of our conversations took place in his studio at Gehry Partners offices where we'd sit at the far end of his conference table. Each time I'd visit, the table would be covered by new things most on his mind at the time -- a building model he was thinking about, a product prototype, perhaps a stack of construction photographs from an ongoing development.

Onstage, as at the conference table in his studio, Gehry and I dissect the inspiration, ideas, and process of designing monumental works like the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles or the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. And each time we do, I marvel at the range and intersection of experience, imagination and influences that result in these and other Gehry projects.

Gehry's grandfather was a Talmudic scholar who taught him to be curious and ask questions, and the two of them would often talk about the Talmud when they were at the family hardware store fixing clocks or cutting glass. His grandmother, in turn, had a wood stove, and as a child Gehry would go with her to a neighborhood shop for left-over wood pieces. When they got home, she would fill the kitchen floor with pieces of raw wood in all kinds of shapes, and the two of them would sit on the floor together creating little cities, bridges and, buildings. When Gehry and I talk about his choosing architecture as a profession, our conversation usually leads back to those times with his grandmother.

In addition to such architects as Le Corbusier, who Gehry calls "number one on my hit parade," Gehry has also been greatly influenced by visual artists. Some are artists he knew like Robert Rauschenberg or Charles Arnoldi, and others are simply artists he admired or studied over the years. Gehry associates say they're often looking up paintings he's referred to in design discussions.

For Gehry, everything is inspiration. A Giotto chapel in Padua came to mind during his design of the Conde Nast employee cafeteria in New York, for instance. The cover of my book is a sketch and photograph of a building complex in Dusseldorf, and his inspirations for that building included both the 20th century bottle paintings of Georgio Morandi and a Renaissance painting by Giovanni Bellini.

Art seems to be where Gehry turns in difficult times as well. At one point in our conversations, when he was talking about a particularly difficult design process, I asked him quite simply how he managed to keep inspiration going at such times. Here's a short excerpt from my book with his reply:

Gehry: I tell my students when you're stuck, go to a museum. I do it myself. I'll go to a museum and look at a painting, and that always uncorks me. I'll always find something in the painting. I do it with literature a bit, too, and with music. Concerts make me explode with ideas. It's just uncontrollable. Sometimes I can't even focus on the music, I get so carried away. But the best trigger for me is going to the museum.

Isenberg : Given the design of your buildings, does sculpture have a particular attraction for you?

Gehry: Yes, but painting more. Sculpture is more definite. Painting is more ephemeral, so you can read more into it. You're freer to interpret from paintings than you are from a 3-D object. You can fantasize more. It's not that the images you're looking at are translatable into a building; it's the fact that the images are there and they're so beautiful. They're so filled with ideas."
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