Icke/Sophocles

From Left: Jordan Scowen, Olivia Reis, Mark Strong, Lesley Manville, James Wilbraham, Anne Reid and Bhasker Patel in Oedipus. (Photo: J. Cervantes.)

Robert Icke’s Oedipus, newly transplanted to Broadway from the West End, is, like his 2015 Oresteia, a modern version of a classic work that has resonated through time since the Greeks birthed tragedy. These are the weightiest cornerstones of the genre: Aeschylus’s Oresteia, the only complete trilogy we have from among the theatrical constructions the ancient Greek playwrights submitted to the City Dionysia festival in Athens, invented dramatic cause and effect, while Sophocles’ Oedipus, which moves backwards and forwards in time without ever altering the setting, is a marvel of dramatic structure that no one has ever surpassed. Aristotle used it as his model for tragic dramaturgy in the Poetics. The ancient Greek world was a treasure trove of firsts – the Poetics pioneered theatrical criticism.

Being and Somethingness: Barnett Newman: Here

Princeton University Press.

“Here. A place in the world. Proof that one exists. Barnett Newman spent a lifetime searching for confirmation of a simple idea.”

Amy Newman

For many decades as an art historian I have often remarked to those who would listen that what matters most about visual art and art history is not exactly what you’re looking at in front of you. Puzzled expressions often ensue. I frequently share the observation that there’s more to fine art than meets the eye, and that what matters is what’s behind your eyes, not what’s in front of them. In other words, how much you know about what you’re seeing, in the sense not of privileged knowledge but rather of the kind of basic information that can be accessed by anyone who is curious about what’s going on in the world of contemporary art, that quantum which can alter your perception forever. By anyone who can, that is, suspend immediate snap value judgments and pursue any credible art text in any reasonable library. And if my audience were still listening, I would proceed to further clarify this perspective: the image is in front of us but the imagination is in our minds, lurking behind our visual apparatus, just waiting to be fully engaged in a deeply personal and, for lack of a better term, existential revelation.