This past Monday, Red Bull Theater presented a live Zoom reading of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or the Fox, directed by Jesse Berger. And then it streamed through the week essentially free but recommended as a pay what you can viewing. As with their other offerings over the past year, this online reading made an impressive use of their actors and modern technology while we are still away from in person theater. To fully experience a 500 year old comedy via 21st Century Zoom has been very rewarding…and RBT’s Volpone pushes the technology even further!
And as the Avocatori (judge) tells us as we are invited into the play, “The place is Venice and Zoom. The time is 1607 and now”. And so it is.
screen capture by Ed Heinzelman
One of the things that Red Bull Theater does impressively and subtly is make up for the lack of a set and stage scenery with very effective and appropriate Zoom backgrounds. If you look at the various screen captures that I have included here you’ll see excerpts from drawings or prints that say 17th Century Venice and the lines work their way from the overall background to the individual character windows. Something that you don’t necessarily notice but makes the reading far more effective as a play.
And as everyone’s Zoom experience grows, we are seeing more elaborate costuming and makeup. This play in particular goes all out and maybe just a little over the top at times…some characters are obviously in Jacobean dress while a few others are strictly steam punk! for instance:
screen capture by Ed Heinzelman
or maybe:
screen capture by Ed Heinzelman
And something else that I’ve been leaning into, after watching a number of RBT readings, is their gender neutral and race neutral casting. It’s been a joy to experience and has added a new understanding of what theater can do. But in this case I am not sure that the gender neutral casting of Carbaccio and Corvino worked quite so well. I found it a bit distracting that these two male characters were played by women…at times I got a little lost from the story line by the cross casting.
One other important talent to have when performing in Zoom is the ability to tell even more of the story than might be normal on stage with your voice and facial expressions. And of course being able to play to the small camera is also a key talent.
But this time, in Volpone, there were a few moments when the dialogue felt rushed and I lost track of the meter, rhyme, and poetry in Jonson’s text, but that is a minor quibble I guess.
And here RBT has really honed their passing of props from character to character…since it can’t actually be accomplished physically…but they have rehearsed the timing and direction to make it feel more natural. And in the spirit of a play of then and now, some of the music interludes included contemporary samples…charming and brought just a bit of a smile.
And the finale! virtual applause all round:
screen capture by Ed Heinzelman
Editor’s note 6/19/2021: adding a ‘Bull Session’ including a cast member and the director giving us some inside perspective on this presentation:
We have been taught that painting, and particularly oil painting, is the highest achievement of modern Western art. And we see it presented in our art museums worldwide, offered for sale in our art galleries and auction houses, and projected on wall sized screens in our art history classes. There is no right or wrong here…paintings of all shapes and styles are great artistic statements that we can relate to and that we love to view. And who would go to Paris and not visit the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa? Or forget to visit the Impressionists at the Art Institute of Chicago? Probably no one taking the time to visit this blog!
But on a personal level, our first experience with making art is drawing. Whether a pencil stub on scrap paper or crayons on a magnificent piece of manila paper or doodles of a custom car or imagined horse in our middle school notebooks, we have all experienced the joy in making a drawing. So when we see drawings we understand the skill and emotion and imagination involved in the making. We have an innate understanding of the process! It isn’t magic the way that painting often feels.
So why isn’t our art viewing experience more involved with drawings? Well there is one fairly simple answer…and it isn’t a lack of drawings in the world…most museums have a trove of drawings in their holdings. It is the simple fragility of a drawing…they are generally works on paper…something that is destroyed by excess light and requires more attention to climate control than paintings. So showing them in a museum requires a great deal of care and thought and they are only shown for limited periods of time. And the means to restore a damaged drawing isn’t the same as restoring a damaged painting.
So when do we see drawings? Most often we will see drawings that are representative of a painter’s development or study in a retrospective of the artist’s work. Sometimes these drawings show a different side of the painter like the caricatures by Claude Monet that were included in the Monet in Chicago show at the Art Institute of Chicago recently. Or we see a vitrine protecting a sketchbook open to a selected page.
On occasion we are presented with shows made up exclusively of drawings like Michelangelo: Mind of the Master at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2019 or Cezanne Drawing currently (through September 25, 2021) at the Museum of Modern Art in New. York. Another opportunity for viewing drawings are dedicated galleries within museums that rotate mini-shows of drawings (or other works on paper) from their holdings. The one I am most familiar with is the Art Institute of Chicago. They have a gallery in the Michigan Avenue building on the main floor just northeast of the Grand Staircase (galleries 124 – 127 from the map) that features works on paper…usually a drawing show or a print show but often with both. It is a don’t miss gallery whenever we visit AIC.
So why do artists draw? For all of the same reasons that you draw (or drew). There is a human need to make marks to express ourselves but there are as many reasons as there are us…what makes each artist draw is universal but as individual as they come.
So why do artists draw? Well for this bit of discourse I am going to pick three instances that are certainly universal. First, to make a statement via a drawing that is a complete piece of art…Second, as a study for another work of art, most often a painting, but for any piece of art that requires research, development, or refinement before the final vision is realized…Third, because artists are always sketching. I am going to try to provide some examples here and maybe a bit more detail…although writing about the why of drawing seems a little futile!
So my first instance, creating a drawing as a complete final work of art. Why would an artist select drawing for a finished piece? Well, because the drawing medium suits the expression of the art work. Certainly a chalk, charcoal, or conte crayon drawing has a decidedly different feel and intent as an oil painting or watercolor. Or it may be a matter of convenience and drawing materials are close at hand if working somewhere away from the studio. Even portable easels are an effort to move and plan around…a pad of fine drawing paper and a box of graphite sticks are often second nature. And there may be economic issues involved…charcoal and paper are relatively inexpensive and there is a part of the art market who will buy art but may not of the wherewithal to purchase a painting. And possibly someone may commission a drawing for as many reasons as an artist may draw!
From a viewers point of view, we have a whole new world to explore. We have another opportunity to understand how the artist sees the world because the problems that need to be worked out in a drawing are different than in a painting. We can also often see the other interests that the artist may have, particularly if they depict a topic or subject matter that isn’t typical of their paintings. Is a landscape artist making portrait drawings? Is an artist who is polished and precise feeling free and unconstrained in the different medium? What new insights will we be exposed to? This can be a rather exciting experience.
So let’s start with a few finished drawings that are the end result themselves. This can be tricky because the value of ‘old master’ drawings has resulted in sketches by name artists being framed and displayed just the same as a fully realized drawing. But let’s take a few peeks!
To my mind this is undoubtedly a finished drawing meant to stand alone as a finished and complete work of art. But one that provides us with a bit different view of Van Gogh although the landscape feels very familiar…but without the energy and of course the confusion of color we are used to in his paintings.
But this…this is obviously quintessential Pablo Picasso!
I am going to add one more to this section, just because these drawings originally came as quite a pleasant shock to me. Some years ago we went to New York to see a Rembrandt show at the Met and a side show was George Seurat drawings. Now we are all familiar with his incredible pointillist masterpiece, the oil painting Sunday Afternoon On The Island of La Grande Jatte. But his drawings were just different different different and just as amazing. So here’s an example of a Seurat drawing that was recently on display at the AIC.
Let’s press on with drawings that are preparatory sketches for a painting or other piece of art. And lets start with one of the world’s favorite Impressionists, Claude Monet. I captured these photos during the recent Monet show at the AIC (my response is here: Water Lilies and Caricatures: Monet At The Art Institute of Chicago).
and now our last category…if you are an artist or know an artist…you know that an artist’s sketchbook is a common appendage…and it isn’t uncommon to make a sketch of something anytime and almost anywhere. And again the reasons are innumerable but an idea pops up and needs to be explored or the light is just right or the subject demands to be limned or one’s fancy is captured! But this is where the artist hones their skill. This is where the artist gets to try new things. This is where the artist works on new ideas. This is where the artist can make art that is a surprise and can lead to the new. The following are just a number of drawings labelled as studies…enjoy:
