Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch

I picked up this book because David Lynch made Mulholland Drive, which is one of my favourite movies. I had high expectations of the book, but it was a disappointment. It seems to be a transcription of talks, and is a compilation of a series of thoughts on various topics. However, its primary focus is to entice the reader into the world of “transcendental meditation,” a technique taught by his late guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Meditation is what gives Lynch the strength, creativity and peace of mind to make great movies. The subtitle is therefore, “Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.” Predictably, the book does have 60s feel to it. Catching The Big Fish is forced and though there are a few gems of advice, I felt the book was superficial. Since it’s rather brief, I’m glad one can flip through it quickly.

Restoration - a play by Claudia Shear

In Restoration, Giulia (played by Ms. Shear), a Brooklyn-based art conservator, is selected to restore Michelangelo’s masterpiece, David, in Florence. The statute is the axis of the play, both visually (a large impressively created prop is at the center of the stage through most of the play) and dramatically. The characters, especially Giulia, revolve around this lifeless, but beautiful work of art as if it were alive. David is Giulia’s object of obsession. The restoration consumes her days and nights, but is also a crutch with which she combats the loneliness she feels as single aging woman. Through the course of the play, the security guard, Max who becomes a confidante, emphasizes that her life and happiness are more important than stone, however beautiful. By the end of the play, she learns to laugh a little and celebrates the coming of the new year, something she hasn’t done in ages.

The theme of single women traveling and ‘finding' themselves is not original. A number of movies and books (such as Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert) published recently follow this theme. However, the play is witty and entertaining, and at no point did I feel like the play was like something I’ve seen or read before.

Shear delves into the personal lives of the other characters, especially Max (who is lonely despite being married), Professor Mandel (who has cancer), and Daphne (whose mother dies). As the play nears it’s end, their lives get intertwined further and they learn to support each other emotionally, despite their minor differences. Restoration is therefore about the restoration of the human spirit and love of life. David may be the axis, but his restoration is incidental.

Photographs by Valerie Belin

At Sikkema Jenkins and Co., a Chelsea gallery, I saw recent works by Valerie Belin. Her photographs include a few still lifes of fruits and portraits of glamorous (but not famous) women. The large format photographs are glossy and colourful, almost too colourful. The bright reds and yellows reminded me of the process of injecting fruits with artificial colours to make them look brighter. The construction of the fruit group with the careful placement of sliced strawberries and other fruits on each other gives the photo an eerie feel. Nature has become unnatural. Beauty has become sinister.

In a portrait of a beautiful black woman (the photos above is a different one), the subject’s skin and eyes look perfectly smooth and bright. She is pristine, not a single blemish on her face is noticeable. But she lacks emotion, and resembles a mannequin or a movie animation character rather than a human being. She is cold and heartless. While observing a series of 3 portraits of a smiling woman with exactly the same face but different headdresses and costumes out of a sci-fi fantasy, I felt the same mannequin-like heartlessness. It’s as if human beings, by deifying female movies stars and models have created beautiful monsters.

Photographs by Anna Gaskell

Earlier this week I saw Anna Gaskell’s photography exhibit Turns Gravity at the Yvon Lambert gallery in Chelsea. Her photographs were in black and white and they immediately reminded me of works by the great B&W photographers of the first half of the twentieth century. Most of the photos were of people, mostly children, in natural settings. A couple of them were shot in the snow. The high contrast between the children dressed in black, some in formal attire, and the white snow was striking. A number of shots were framed to include only parts of the body, especially the lower portion of running legs. In one photo, the frame in effect beheads the child at the neck. The children play with great energy and the body parts often are brimming with excitement. However, the overcast winter skies and the ruthless framing suggests that the children’s happiness will shortly be truncated.

In some of the photographs the children's positions are overtly staged, and the effect is surreal. It’s as if the photographs are the images in the mind of someone longing for his or her lost childhood. The hazy image of a child, as if shot from an early box camera in the late 1800s, is one such photograph.