IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO today that Alan Bean became the fourth man to walk on the moon. During the Apollo 12 mission, he executed scientific experiments and collected rocks for study back on Earth, and everything the astronaut learned served to further NASA's understanding of the moon.
But that knowledge has also been invaluable to Bean's post-astronaut career: Since June 1981 he's been a full-time painter whose sole focus is capturing his experiences on, and knowledge of, the moon.
"My job is trying to tell as many of the stories that I know that I think will get lost if I don't tell them," Bean said on his paintings. "When I'm thinking of my life expectancy — I'm 77 now — I don't say, 'Gee, I hope I live a long time so I won't die.' I say, 'I hope I live a long time because I have a lot of these things to do before I'm gone.'"
The National Air and Space Museum's exhibition "Alan Bean: Painting Apollo, First Artist on Another World" displays more than 50 pieces, plus 18 NASA artifacts related to the mission, and it shows how the astronaut artist balances his right- and left-brain thinking to create images that are as striking visually as they are elucidating scientifically. [Click here to read our interview with curator Carolyn Russo.]
But despite the moon trip being a defining point in his life, Bean said he rarely thinks of the Earth's satellite outside of when he's working on a painting.
"I don't — I'm thinking art thoughts," he said. "I may be saying, 'Does this look like the surface of the moon?' ... So, from that point of view, I'm thinking about the moon. But when I say, 'This rock needs to be more three dimensional, it needs to set on this sloping surface.' That's an art problem."
That's not to say Bean is over the moon. He knows the importance of his space exploration, including commanding Skylab 3 in 1973, which is why he's so intent on sharing his experiences through art.
"This was a great human adventure — certainly one of the greatest of the 20th century," he said. "And here I am lucky enough, blessed enough, with interest and skills to tell this story in a way that no one else can do it. I feel that duty."
There's more of our conversation with Capt. Bean after the jump, including his revolutionary ideas about what he would do if he ran the space program. (Two words: Oprah Winfrey.)
Continue Reading "Not Over the Moon: Alan Bean, First Artist on Another World" »
OVER THE PAST FOUR DECADES, painter Brice Marden has created monochromatic paintings, examined linear networks and found inspiration in Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. The abstractionist comes to the National Gallery of Art on Sunday to converse with Harry Cooper, curator and head of the department of modern and contemporary art. Marden has five paintings and two drawings on display in "The Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection: Selected Works," on view until May.
The show contains 126 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints that the Meyerhoffs collected between 1958 and 2004, and includes works by Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. Marden says he knew the Meyerhoffs, and they would visit his studio to purchase paintings.
Of his works in the show, Marden says, "there's a very strong unifying vein that runs through the whole group, even though in a certain superficial way they all look very different from each other."
Continue Reading "The Collector's Art: Painter Brice Marden at the National Gallery of Art" »
THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY'S "Portraiture Now: Communities" is not laid out to indicate a starting and ending point. That makes sense, because the show is is as conceptually open-ended and accessible as it is physically.
"Communities" features the works of three painters, all thematically bound by a blending of old techniques and new, democratically rendering American subjects from almost every walk of life.
A leveling of the social playing field in the age of online dating, social networking and virtual identity, Jim Torok's 23-piece "A Colorado Family," for instance, maps underlying features that unite its three generations, broaching a profound question: What indelible human traits bind us as a people? An inversion of Chuck Close's photo-enlargement techniques, it's no quaint irony that his 5-by-4-inch oil-on-panel portraits, each of which can take a year to complete, are little larger than Polaroids.
Continue Reading "A Picture of a Nation: 'Portraiture Now: Communities'" »
WITH HER FIRST major project, "The Hijabi Monologues," writer and performer Sahar Ullah has created a space in which Muslim women can share their lived experiences. She invites others into that space on Sunday at the Kennedy Center, where she'll perform the work and lead a post-performance discussion.
The South Florida native says such a forum is needed to help a post-9/11 American public see the humanity behind the hijab, or headscarf, worn by many U.S. Muslim women.
An episodic play styled after Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," "The Hijabi Monologues" uses 12 true-to-life stories.
"The project's purpose is to humanize one of the most viably noticeable minorities in America — women who wear the hijab," said Ullah.
IN ITS STAGING of Charles L. Mee's "Full Circle," the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company not only breaks down the "fourth wall" — it builds entirely new rooms. Throughout the course of the play, the cast guides audience members throughout Woolly's facility, performing scenes in every nook of the venue including the theater lobby.
Set in Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall, the principal plotline of "Full Circle" follows an American socialite (Naomi Jacobson) and a young German protester (Jessica Frances Dukes) who set out to save an abandoned baby amid the turmoil.
"Rather than sit in the theater and watch this voyage, we're staging the production throughout the Woolly building, inviting audiences to navigate the story with us and have their own experience of changing rules and shifting perspectives," said director Michael Rohd.
IN SEPTEMBER, the Jesus Lizard played its first show in a decade, and David Yow was so nervous he was throwing up. It seems like an incongruous idea — one of rock's most dynamic frontmen suffering stage fright — but as soon as the music started, Yow "was more on autopilot than ever.
"I had planned on not taking my shirt off, but 15 seconds into the set, my shirt was off and I was in the audience. Swear to God, I didn't do that. It just took me."
Formed in 1987, the Jesus Lizard developed a reputation for extreme and energetic live shows, with Yow prowling the stage shirtless as the band — drummer Mac McNeilly, guitarist Duane Denison and bass player David Sims — pounded out the sludgiest punk-metal riffs imaginable.
THURSDAY: French DJ and producer Guetta gets the party started at Fur on Thursday night. This sought-after turntablist spins a nonstop set of grooves, beats and vibes that have made him the funkiest guy in France. OK, so there's not a lot of competition, but you get the drift. Tickets are limited, so get there early to shake what ya got.
» Fur Nightclub, 33 Patterson St. NE; Thu., Nov. 19, 9 p.m., $25; 202-842-3401.
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
SUNDAY: On Sunday, the Verizon Center hosts its third ever pay-per-view event. The Survivor Series features World Wrestling Entertainment excitement kicked up with hometown fervor — WWE star Dave "The Animal" Batista, above, is a D.C. native and one heck of a closely shaved bruiser. He fights Rey Mysterio to the cheers of a local crowd.
» Read our interview with WWE superstar Chris Jericho, who will also be at Survivor Series.
» Verizon Center, 601 F St. NW; Sun., Nov. 22, 7:45 p.m., $30-$300; 800-551-7328. (Gallery Place-Chinatown)
Photo courtesy WWE
SUNDAY: Blues-rock revivalist and self-conscious hipster Jon Spencer started a side project with Matt Verta-Ray that is a metric ton less annoying than Spencer on his own. Heavy Trash is all fun, no ostentatious posing — nasty-minded desert-road psychobilly with a bottle in its jacket and one thing on its mind. Succumb to the sleazy sonic assault at DC9 on Sunday.
» DC9, 1940 9th St. NW; with Elliott Brood, Sun., Nov. 22, 9 p.m., $12; 202-483-5000. (U St.-Cardozo)
Photo courtesy Heavy Trash
LEIF OVE ANDSNES WAS winning piano competitions at an age when most of us were competing only in the confines of the school gym. The Grammy Award-nominated Norwegian classical pianist is no less ambitious now that he's 39. His latest project is a multi-media stage rendering of Modest Mussorgsky's notoriously difficult suite "Pictures at an Exhibition." For the production, titled "Pictures Reframed," Andsnes has partnered with South African visual artist Robin Rhode, who created a series of films to go along with Andsnes' live performances. "Pictures Reframed" premiered at New York's Lincoln Center last week and stops in D.C. on Friday.
» EXPRESS: How did the idea of a collaborative series of concerts come about?
» ANDSNES: I've had a wish for years to try to do a different kind of concert — and it was also partly inspired by the Lincoln Center having a program combining different art disciplines. They had talked with me for years about the possibility of doing something like this. I was playing Mussorgsky's piece a few years ago and I thought maybe this is something we could bring to visual art somehow. Then I met Robin three years ago and we decided to do this together.
Continue Reading "Old-Fashioned Modernity: Leif Ove Andsnes" »
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