newyorker--2020-12-20--Shigeru Miyamoto Wants to Create a Kinder World

By 1993 , when the journalist David Sheff published “ Game Over : How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry , Captured Your Dollars , and Enslaved Your Children , ” Miyamoto was widely considered the most important video-game designer in history .
Although he benefits from the fact that most games are made by sprawling teams , which require a figurehead to whom players can attribute credit ( or blame ) , he remains a nearly legendary figure .
His games have sold hundreds of millions of copies ; he played a major role in designing the Wii ; he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mascot as the characters he ’ s created .
( Rumors that he might retire have had an immediate effect on the company ’ s stock price . )
But though he ’ s become famous , the idea that Miyamoto is doing much “ zapping ” is laughable .
For one thing , he ’ s always shunned the shooting games that now dominate the medium .
His aim , which he pursues with a strict , almost fanatical devotion , is to elicit joy .
Miyamoto turned sixty-eight in November .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Disney since the early days of his career , and those comparisons are set to continue ; Miyamoto is currently overseeing the design and installation of Super Nintendo World , a half-billion-dollar theme park at Universal Studios in Osaka .
Because of his mystique , Nintendo tends to keep Miyamoto away from the media ; as Nick Paumgarten wrote in his Profile , from 2010 , securing an audience is “ a little like trying to rescue Princess Toadstool.
” But , a few days after Miyamoto ’ s birthday , I had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at length , over Zoom—and he was willing to show more of the man behind the mascot than expected .
In doing so , he revealed how deeply he has considered the discipline of game design and how much he has tried to move it forward .
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity .
I believe congratulations are in order .
Happy birthday .
Are you an easy person to buy gifts for ?
I actually don ’ t buy a lot of gifts for other people , which means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Maybe it ’ s difficult for people to choose things to give me .
I received a birthday cake at Universal Studios when I was there this week , along with this T-shirt .
[ Points at his black shirt , emblazoned with the logo for Super Nintendo World . ]
O.K .
Whereabouts are you right now ?
I ’ m in my house in Kyoto , not at Universal Studios , as the background suggests .
Kyoto has been home to Nintendo ’ s offices for more than a hundred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of pilgrimage for some people .
In my mind , it has the aura of Willy Wonka ’ s Chocolate Factory : a secretive building full of marvellous inventors working on things that will delight us .
Am I close here ?
Once you get inside the building , it is a little like you ’ ve described .
But on the outside , it ’ s very simple and clean , just a simple square building .
Some people have even likened the reception area to a hospital waiting room .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you get past the reception area , does the environment help inspire the kind of creativity for which Nintendo is known ?
Well , like I say , the building is simple .
The staff can bring in any toys or action figures they like , but we have a system whereby designers switch desks according to whatever project they ’ re working on .
Because there are no fixed placements , people don ’ t have that many personal belongings around them .
I think , if a child were to visit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might seem a bit boring ?
The unique creative work takes place within each person .
It doesn ’ t require a unique-looking environment .
Obviously , we have all the equipment to do our work : motion-capture studios , sound studios .
And we have a well-lit cafeteria , too , with good food .
You ’ ve been working at Nintendo for four decades now .
What still excites you about going into the office ?
It ’ s not the environment that makes me want to go so much as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I still spend a great deal of time thinking about games .
By Monday , I ’ m usually excited to get back to work .
To that end , I sometimes send e-mails over the weekend , which people don ’ t appreciate .
What was the last idea that made you feel that way ?
Recently , I ’ ve been very involved with Universal Studios in Osaka , planning the attractions that are going to be there and putting the final touches on the rides .
I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Since I ’ m able to test and play these games easily at home , on the weekend , by Monday , I usually have a long list of things I want to try out and explore .
Super Mario Bros. is thirty-five years old this year .
Half a lifetime .
How does that make you feel ?
Soon after Super Mario became famous , someone told me that I had reached the status of Walt Disney .
I remember pointing out that , at the time , Mickey Mouse was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mario had only been around for two or three years .
So there was a lot to catch up on .
I do believe that the quality of something hinges on whether or not it ’ s sought several decades after its creation .
Walt Disney didn ’ t create everything that Disney put out , but the idea that a company could make these long-lasting symbols—that ’ s something I ’ ve admired .
We ’ re finally at a point where people who played with Nintendo ’ s characters as children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their children .
That longevity is special .
Do you have children or grandchildren ?
Yes , I have two children and one grandchild .
I ask because , when I was growing up—and I think this was probably something that happened in a lot of schools—there was a kid who boasted that his dad worked for Nintendo , and nobody believed him .
For your children , not only was it actually true , but they also shared their father with Super Mario .
Did their friends ever doubt them ?
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too much about my occupation , to be honest .
Even with their friends , once in a while , a major fan comes to visit us , but most of the time we ’ ve been able to just hang out as a family .
They ’ ve certainly never felt pressure to follow a certain path or to be a certain way .
At home , I ’ m a normal dad .
I don ’ t think that they have felt any undue burden because of who their father is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been trying to insure that their kids maintain a healthy relationship to video games—not playing for too long , and so on .
How did you negotiate these things with your own children ?
Kids feeling like they can ’ t stop playing because the game is so fun—that ’ s something that I can understand and sympathize with .
It ’ s important for parents to play the games , to understand why the child can ’ t quit until reaching the next save point , for example .
In terms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve been fortunate in that they ’ ve always had a good relationship with video games .
I ’ ve never had to restrict them or take games away from them .
It ’ s important to note that , in our household , all the video-game hardware belonged to me , and the children understood that they were borrowing these things .
If they couldn ’ t follow the rules , then there was an understanding that I could just take the machine away from them .
[ Laughs . ]
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would always encourage them to play outside .
They played a lot of Sega games , too , by the way .
Really ?
Did you ever feel jealous about them playing a rival ’ s games ?
[ Laughs . ]
Not jealous so much as inspired to try harder , so that they preferred the ones I made .
Which Sega games did they enjoy ?
They liked the driving games .
Out Run .
They also played a lot of Space Harrier .
Now , the other day , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grandchild .
He was playing a Nintendo game called Captain Toad , and his eyes were shining ; he was really into the experience .
So I could see how a parent might be concerned about how immersed their child can become in a game .
But , in my game design , I always want to encourage a relationship between a parent and child that is fundamentally nurturing .
I was helping my grandchild navigate the 3-D world inside the game , and I could see the 3-D structure being built inside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought , This could help his growth as well .
I believe in video games as a medium , and believe they can often tell us things about ourselves that are different from the insights offered by literature or film .
There ’ s also a part of me that recognizes they can occupy a bit too much space in a person ’ s life .
They are demanding and alluring ; the obsession they inspire can squeeze out important things .
Your job , usually , is to keep players engaged .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that role and the responsibility of putting things into the world that don ’ t diminish people ?

In 1977, Shigeru Miyamoto joined Nintendo, a company then known for selling toys, playing cards, and trivial novelties. Miyamoto was twenty-four, fresh out of art school. His employer, inspired by the success of a California company named Atari, was hoping to expand into video games. Miyamoto began tinkering with a story about a carpenter, a damsel in distress, and a giant ape. The result, Donkey Kong, débuted in 1981. Four years later, Miyamoto had turned the carpenter into a plumber; Mario, and the Super Mario Bros. franchise, had arrived. But Miyamoto wanted more. Tired of linear, side-scrolling mechanics, he yearned to conjure the open world and carefree adventures of his childhood in Sonobe, a town just west of Kyoto. In 1986, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda.
By 1993, when the journalist David Sheff published “Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children,” Miyamoto was widely considered the most important video-game designer in history. Although he benefits from the fact that most games are made by sprawling teams, which require a figurehead to whom players can attribute credit (or blame), he remains a nearly legendary figure. His games have sold hundreds of millions of copies; he played a major role in designing the Wii; he’s as much Nintendo’s mascot as the characters he’s created. (Rumors that he might retire have had an immediate effect on the company’s stock price.) But though he’s become famous, the idea that Miyamoto is doing much “zapping” is laughable. For one thing, he’s always shunned the shooting games that now dominate the medium. His aim, which he pursues with a strict, almost fanatical devotion, is to elicit joy.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
Miyamoto turned sixty-eight in November. He’s been linked to Walt Disney since the early days of his career, and those comparisons are set to continue; Miyamoto is currently overseeing the design and installation of Super Nintendo World, a half-billion-dollar theme park at Universal Studios in Osaka. Because of his mystique, Nintendo tends to keep Miyamoto away from the media; as Nick Paumgarten wrote in his Profile, from 2010, securing an audience is “a little like trying to rescue Princess Toadstool.” But, a few days after Miyamoto’s birthday, I had a rare chance to speak to him at length, over Zoom—and he was willing to show more of the man behind the mascot than expected. In doing so, he revealed how deeply he has considered the discipline of game design and how much he has tried to move it forward. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I believe congratulations are in order. Happy birthday. Are you an easy person to buy gifts for?
I actually don’t buy a lot of gifts for other people, which means I find it hard to receive gifts. Maybe it’s difficult for people to choose things to give me. I received a birthday cake at Universal Studios when I was there this week, along with this T-shirt. [Points at his black shirt, emblazoned with the logo for Super Nintendo World.]
O.K. Whereabouts are you right now?
I’m in my house in Kyoto, not at Universal Studios, as the background suggests.
Kyoto has been home to Nintendo’s offices for more than a hundred years. It has become a site of pilgrimage for some people. In my mind, it has the aura of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory: a secretive building full of marvellous inventors working on things that will delight us. Am I close here?
Once you get inside the building, it is a little like you’ve described. But on the outside, it’s very simple and clean, just a simple square building. Some people have even likened the reception area to a hospital waiting room. It’s kind of serene.
When you get past the reception area, does the environment help inspire the kind of creativity for which Nintendo is known?
Well, like I say, the building is simple. The staff can bring in any toys or action figures they like, but we have a system whereby designers switch desks according to whatever project they’re working on. Because there are no fixed placements, people don’t have that many personal belongings around them. I think, if a child were to visit and look at the space, it might seem a bit boring? The unique creative work takes place within each person. It doesn’t require a unique-looking environment. Obviously, we have all the equipment to do our work: motion-capture studios, sound studios. And we have a well-lit cafeteria, too, with good food.
You’ve been working at Nintendo for four decades now. What still excites you about going into the office?
It’s not the environment that makes me want to go so much as the fact that, over the weekend, I still spend a great deal of time thinking about games. By Monday, I’m usually excited to get back to work. To that end, I sometimes send e-mails over the weekend, which people don’t appreciate.
What was the last idea that made you feel that way?
Recently, I’ve been very involved with Universal Studios in Osaka, planning the attractions that are going to be there and putting the final touches on the rides. I’ve also been involved with making mobile games. Since I’m able to test and play these games easily at home, on the weekend, by Monday, I usually have a long list of things I want to try out and explore.
Super Mario Bros. is thirty-five years old this year. Half a lifetime. How does that make you feel?
Soon after Super Mario became famous, someone told me that I had reached the status of Walt Disney. I remember pointing out that, at the time, Mickey Mouse was more than fifty years old, while Mario had only been around for two or three years. So there was a lot to catch up on. I do believe that the quality of something hinges on whether or not it’s sought several decades after its creation. Walt Disney didn’t create everything that Disney put out, but the idea that a company could make these long-lasting symbols—that’s something I’ve admired. We’re finally at a point where people who played with Nintendo’s characters as children are playing with those same characters with their children. That longevity is special.
Do you have children or grandchildren?
Yes, I have two children and one grandchild.
I ask because, when I was growing up—and I think this was probably something that happened in a lot of schools—there was a kid who boasted that his dad worked for Nintendo, and nobody believed him. For your children, not only was it actually true, but they also shared their father with Super Mario. Did their friends ever doubt them?
I don’t think my children cared too much about my occupation, to be honest. Even with their friends, once in a while, a major fan comes to visit us, but most of the time we’ve been able to just hang out as a family. They’ve certainly never felt pressure to follow a certain path or to be a certain way. At home, I’m a normal dad. I don’t think that they have felt any undue burden because of who their father is.
In lockdown, millions of parents have been trying to insure that their kids maintain a healthy relationship to video games—not playing for too long, and so on. How did you negotiate these things with your own children?
Kids feeling like they can’t stop playing because the game is so fun—that’s something that I can understand and sympathize with. It’s important for parents to play the games, to understand why the child can’t quit until reaching the next save point, for example. In terms of my own kids, I’ve been fortunate in that they’ve always had a good relationship with video games. I’ve never had to restrict them or take games away from them.


newyorker--2020-12-20--New Yorker Photography in a Year of Crisis

Sending photographers into the streets is one thing ; sending them into crowded COVID-19 wards is another .
In April , to capture the crisis inside New York City ’ s overburdened hospitals , the magazine ’ s photo department enlisted Karen Cunningham , an intensive-care nurse with a background in photography .
Cunningham secured permission to bring her camera to her own workplace , at Lenox Hill Hospital , and in the course of two twelve-hour shifts she followed another nurse , her friend Cady Chaplin , and their colleagues in the I.C.U .
She captured patients receiving oxygen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a patient ’ s hand or performing a lung ultrasound , but also the lonely moments after work , when Chaplin would shed her P.P.E .
in the hospital locker room and commute home through a deserted city .
In June , city streets were packed again as a historic protest movement erupted in the wake of George Floyd ’ s killing at the hands of police , in Minneapolis .
Isaac Scott , a twenty-nine-year-old art student in Philadelphia , documented the protests there .
The coronavirus was a safety concern—Scott wore @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the police and their riot gear .
“ I was teargassed twice , ” Scott said .
He captured scenes of chaos , and fire , but one of his most powerful images is of complete stillness : protesters lying down on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for eight minutes and forty-six seconds , the length of time that the police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd ’ s neck .

Sending photographers into the streets is one thing; sending them into crowded COVID-19 wards is another. In April, to capture the crisis inside New York City’s overburdened hospitals, the magazine’s photo department enlisted Karen Cunningham, an intensive-care nurse with a background in photography. Cunningham secured permission to bring her camera to her own workplace, at Lenox Hill Hospital, and in the course of two twelve-hour shifts she followed another nurse, her friend Cady Chaplin, and their colleagues in the I.C.U. She captured patients receiving oxygen and being intubated, a doctor holding a patient’s hand or performing a lung ultrasound, but also the lonely moments after work, when Chaplin would shed her P.P.E. in the hospital locker room and commute home through a deserted city.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
In June, city streets were packed again as a historic protest movement erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police, in Minneapolis. Isaac Scott, a twenty-nine-year-old art student in Philadelphia, documented the protests there. The coronavirus was a safety concern—Scott wore a mask at all times—but so were the police and their riot gear. “I was teargassed twice,” Scott said. He captured scenes of chaos, and fire, but one of his most powerful images is of complete stillness: protesters lying down on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, the length of time that the police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck.


newyorker--2020-12-21--A One-Man Musical About Mother Teresa

A One-Man Musical About Mother Teresa

If the words “ Expressionist musical portrait of Mother Teresa performed in drag from East Village closet ” make your heart beat faster—and how could they not ?
—you ’ re in luck .
Get yourself to YouTube , where you can find Heather Christian ’ s “ I Am Sending You the Sacred Face , ” the latest offering from Theatre in Quarantine , a “ pandemic performance laboratory ” created by the writer , director , and actor Joshua William Gelb .
The closet in question is in Gelb ’ s studio apartment .
It is four feet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two feet deep , and , like a magician ’ s scarf-belching hat , contains astounding multitudes .
Gelb has been using the closet as a stage since the start of the pandemic , when he emptied it of its contents , painted it white , and stuck a camera where the door used to be .
Sacrificing storage space in this town ?
That ’ s commitment .
In the past eight months , Gelb and a group of collaborators have put on upward of twenty shows , ranging from brief improvisations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ works , ingenious bonsai creations of technical inventiveness and stylistic panache .
In Gelb ’ s version of “ Krapp ’ s Last Tape , ” his closet becomes a space shuttle , gently floating off into a great abyss ; in “ Footnote for the End of Time , ” his feverish adaptation of Borges ’ s short story “ The Secret Miracle , ” Gelb renders himself a character trapped in an animation , narrating a tale of art and persecution as it comes alive around him in hand-drawn illustrations .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , should serve as a dare , and as an inspiration .
Constraint is an undervalued blessing .
A closet can be a castle when the spirit moves you .
“ I Am Sending You the Sacred Face , ” which was co-presented by Theatre Mitu ’ s Expansion Works , and was , like most Theatre in Quarantine productions , recorded live , could be called an abbreviated opera for a single singer .
In a flitting monologue , spoken and sung , Mother Teresa ( played by Gelb ) tells us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the poor , and her own poverty ; she reproaches us for our indifference and herself for her vanity , and muses about the nature of time and God .
She can be casual and confessional , as if speaking to a therapist , and imperious and commanding , too .
Christian wrote the libretto and the shimmering , vehement music , which she recorded at home , playing the piano , synth , flute , and percussion .
( Guitar and bass tracks were added by the sound designer and mixer Ada @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we hear singing during the forty-minute piece , both solo and in pointillistic a-cappella backup ; Gelb lip-synchs throughout .
Christian ’ s supple spring-water freshness puts me in mind of Sufjan Stevens , as does her interest in exploring religious themes in poetic , pop-inflected ways , but her work reaches for darker , rougher notes .
Her path to devotion is paved with struggle and doubt .
Earlier this year , on Playwrights Horizon ’ s “ Soundstage ” podcast , she débuted an exquisite musical work called “ Prime.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is meant to serve as “ a practical breviary ” for prayer at the bleary hour of 6 A.M. on , say , an average Tuesday .
Set it as an alarm and watch even the most sluggish sleeper leap out of bed .
“ Prime ” ends up exploding into rousing , gospel-chorus joy , but Christian earns that communal release through aching moments of quiet privacy .
“ Shrink my need into a tiny acorn , ” she sings , with yearning .
You don ’ t have to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heart .
“ I Am Sending You the Sacred Face , ” which Gelb directed with the choreographer Katie Rose McLaughlin , opens with the sound of a buzzing mosquito .
Gelb ’ s closet has been draped in silvery tinsel ; dressed as Mother Teresa , he stands inside it like an icon in a church niche , a makeup ring light transfigured into a glowing white halo over his head .
( His costume pairs the saint ’ s trademark blue-striped wimple with a less orthodox sparkly sequinned gown . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ into a Renaissance triptych , with Gelb framed in each gold-edged panel .
Stivo Arnoczy is responsible for the wizardly video design , which uses a series of loops and alternating simultaneous streams to multiply Gelb like the loaves and fishes , while Kristen Robinson ’ s dazzling scenography serves as a reminder of the trippy strain that runs through Catholic aesthetics .
Take a look at the Resurrection panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece , with its funky boudoir Jesus floating before an orb of psychedelic light , and recall that the monks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cared for peasants dying of St. Anthony ’ s fire—an illness marked by hallucinations which was caused by eating rye infected with the same strain of fungus that was used , centuries later , to make LSD .
Amid this splendor , Mother Teresa introduces herself .
“ I wear shoes that do not fit me .
/ Stink and sweat , refuse a fan , a phone , a TV / praise my lousy bed and head , ” she sings .
“ My commonality with those I serve gives dignity.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over , the radically humble caretaker of the poor , come to us in the unlikely guise of a rock star .
Gelb , who moves in precise , rhythmic jerks , flings his body toward us , demanding contact , attention ; he braces himself against his closet ’ s walls and leans out , as if strung to the prow of a ship , to sing furiously into our faces .
Mother Teresa , urgent and angry , wants us to look at the ugliness of poverty and see a plague @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humans , not God , must be responsible for ending it .
But she doubts that she can live up to the standard that she preaches .
Her motives are impure .
She describes her first calling , to be a nun , as coming from a phone in her heart ( made wittily manifest as a red landline whose corkscrew cord is attached to Gelb ’ s chest ) .
This call is easy enough to obey , but a second one terrifies her .
God , in the form of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red mouth , commands her to serve the poor .
“ You probably will not , ” God says .
He is mocking her .
Teresa panics ; she equivocates .
Even after she accepts the mission , she battles with herself , ashamed of the pride that she takes in her own humility .
And she struggles , hideously , with a dark night of the soul—a fifty-year period of miserable distance from God , which , in reality , began shortly after she received her calling and lasted until her death @ @ @ @ @ @ @ language is her own , she draws on Mother Teresa ’ s letters , published after her death , to reveal the extent of the saint ’ s anguish .
Her Teresa speaks of having no soul , of being empty , undefended , a vessel waiting hopelessly to be filled .
There is a bitterness , even a sour humor , to her resignation .
“ I always said if they ever canonize me , I would want to be known as a patron saint of darkness , ” she says—one more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s performance , built on metered gesture and pantomime , is a shrewd answer to the trick question of how to embody an icon .
He doesn ’ t , because he can ’ t .
His Mother Teresa is about as far from the stooped , wrinkled , beneficent postcard version of the woman as you can get .
( She has equally little to do with the portrayal of the nun as a grifter and a hypocrite which is favored by her detractors . )
Blasting away accumulated layers of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unknowable mystery of the person underneath , an ordinary woman living out an extraordinary life .
The show was made with the help of a “ drag dramaturg , ” Dito van Reigersberg , and it ’ s refreshing to see drag , a form that tends to codify femininity even as it celebrates it , used in so strange and sexless a way , its familiar tropes scrapped and reinvented .
Anyone can try sainthood on , for an evening , to see how it fits .
One of Christian ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day was its own kind of performance : “ a medieval darkness done to a modern woman—so it was quite a show.
” The saint committed wholly to the act , and the world watched in awe , while beneath the spectacle a woman labored , hidden , trying not to be seen .
♦

If the words “Expressionist musical portrait of Mother Teresa performed in drag from East Village closet” make your heart beat faster—and how could they not?—you’re in luck. Get yourself to YouTube, where you can find Heather Christian’s “I Am Sending You the Sacred Face,” the latest offering from Theatre in Quarantine, a “pandemic performance laboratory” created by the writer, director, and actor Joshua William Gelb. The closet in question is in Gelb’s studio apartment. It is four feet wide, eight feet tall, and two feet deep, and, like a magician’s scarf-belching hat, contains astounding multitudes. Gelb has been using the closet as a stage since the start of the pandemic, when he emptied it of its contents, painted it white, and stuck a camera where the door used to be. Sacrificing storage space in this town? That’s commitment.
In the past eight months, Gelb and a group of collaborators have put on upward of twenty shows, ranging from brief improvisations to a series of increasingly ambitious new works, ingenious bonsai creations of technical inventiveness and stylistic panache. In Gelb’s version of “Krapp’s Last Tape,” his closet becomes a space shuttle, gently floating off into a great abyss; in “Footnote for the End of Time,” his feverish adaptation of Borges’s short story “The Secret Miracle,” Gelb renders himself a character trapped in an animation, narrating a tale of art and persecution as it comes alive around him in hand-drawn illustrations. These works, odes to theatrical flexibility, should serve as a dare, and as an inspiration. Constraint is an undervalued blessing. A closet can be a castle when the spirit moves you.
“I Am Sending You the Sacred Face,” which was co-presented by Theatre Mitu’s Expansion Works, and was, like most Theatre in Quarantine productions, recorded live, could be called an abbreviated opera for a single singer. In a flitting monologue, spoken and sung, Mother Teresa (played by Gelb) tells us of her faith, her commitment to the poor, and her own poverty; she reproaches us for our indifference and herself for her vanity, and muses about the nature of time and God. She can be casual and confessional, as if speaking to a therapist, and imperious and commanding, too. Christian wrote the libretto and the shimmering, vehement music, which she recorded at home, playing the piano, synth, flute, and percussion. (Guitar and bass tracks were added by the sound designer and mixer Ada Westfall.) It is Christian whom we hear singing during the forty-minute piece, both solo and in pointillistic a-cappella backup; Gelb lip-synchs throughout.
Christian’s supple spring-water freshness puts me in mind of Sufjan Stevens, as does her interest in exploring religious themes in poetic, pop-inflected ways, but her work reaches for darker, rougher notes. Her path to devotion is paved with struggle and doubt. Earlier this year, on Playwrights Horizon’s “Soundstage” podcast, she débuted an exquisite musical work called “Prime.” Inspired by cloistered monks’ Masses, it is meant to serve as “a practical breviary” for prayer at the bleary hour of 6 A.M. on, say, an average Tuesday. Set it as an alarm and watch even the most sluggish sleeper leap out of bed. “Prime” ends up exploding into rousing, gospel-chorus joy, but Christian earns that communal release through aching moments of quiet privacy. “Shrink my need into a tiny acorn,” she sings, with yearning. You don’t have to be a believer to take that prayer to heart.
“I Am Sending You the Sacred Face,” which Gelb directed with the choreographer Katie Rose McLaughlin, opens with the sound of a buzzing mosquito. Gelb’s closet has been draped in silvery tinsel; dressed as Mother Teresa, he stands inside it like an icon in a church niche, a makeup ring light transfigured into a glowing white halo over his head. (His costume pairs the saint’s trademark blue-striped wimple with a less orthodox sparkly sequinned gown.) He claps, and the scene transforms into a Renaissance triptych, with Gelb framed in each gold-edged panel. Stivo Arnoczy is responsible for the wizardly video design, which uses a series of loops and alternating simultaneous streams to multiply Gelb like the loaves and fishes, while Kristen Robinson’s dazzling scenography serves as a reminder of the trippy strain that runs through Catholic aesthetics. Take a look at the Resurrection panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece, with its funky boudoir Jesus floating before an orb of psychedelic light, and recall that the monks for whom Matthias Grünewald painted his masterpiece cared for peasants dying of St. Anthony’s fire—an illness marked by hallucinations which was caused by eating rye infected with the same strain of fungus that was used, centuries later, to make LSD.
Amid this splendor, Mother Teresa introduces herself. “I wear shoes that do not fit me. / Stink and sweat, refuse a fan, a phone, a TV / praise my lousy bed and head,” she sings. “My commonality with those I serve gives dignity.” This is the saint known the world over, the radically humble caretaker of the poor, come to us in the unlikely guise of a rock star. Gelb, who moves in precise, rhythmic jerks, flings his body toward us, demanding contact, attention; he braces himself against his closet’s walls and leans out, as if strung to the prow of a ship, to sing furiously into our faces. Mother Teresa, urgent and angry, wants us to look at the ugliness of poverty and see a plague of human greed and indifference—to realize that humans, not God, must be responsible for ending it.
But she doubts that she can live up to the standard that she preaches. Her motives are impure. She describes her first calling, to be a nun, as coming from a phone in her heart (made wittily manifest as a red landline whose corkscrew cord is attached to Gelb’s chest). This call is easy enough to obey, but a second one terrifies her. God, in the form of a lush, “Rocky Horror”-style red mouth, commands her to serve the poor. “You probably will not,” God says. He is mocking her. Teresa panics; she equivocates. Even after she accepts the mission, she battles with herself, ashamed of the pride that she takes in her own humility. And she struggles, hideously, with a dark night of the soul—a fifty-year period of miserable distance from God, which, in reality, began shortly after she received her calling and lasted until her death. Though most of Christian’s language is her own, she draws on Mother Teresa’s letters, published after her death, to reveal the extent of the saint’s anguish. Her Teresa speaks of having no soul, of being empty, undefended, a vessel waiting hopelessly to be filled. There is a bitterness, even a sour humor, to her resignation. “I always said if they ever canonize me, I would want to be known as a patron saint of darkness,” she says—one more prayer that has gone unanswered.
Gelb’s performance, built on metered gesture and pantomime, is a shrewd answer to the trick question of how to embody an icon. He doesn’t, because he can’t. His Mother Teresa is about as far from the stooped, wrinkled, beneficent postcard version of the woman as you can get. (She has equally little to do with the portrayal of the nun as a grifter and a hypocrite which is favored by her detractors.) Blasting away accumulated layers of veneration, Gelb and Christian honor the unknowable mystery of the person underneath, an ordinary woman living out an extraordinary life. The show was made with the help of a “drag dramaturg,” Dito van Reigersberg, and it’s refreshing to see drag, a form that tends to codify femininity even as it celebrates it, used in so strange and sexless a way, its familiar tropes scrapped and reinvented. Anyone can try sainthood on, for an evening, to see how it fits. One of Christian’s points is that being Mother Teresa every day was its own kind of performance: “a medieval darkness done to a modern woman—so it was quite a show.” The saint committed wholly to the act, and the world watched in awe, while beneath the spectacle a woman labored, hidden, trying not to be seen. ♦


Comedian Caption Showdown

Each week , you , the readers , submit to our caption contest .
But you ’ re weary , @ @ @ @ @ from trying to grin and bear your way through 2020 .
So we called in @ @ @ @ @ is—to caption this cartoon by E. S. Glenn .
Follow @ newyorkermag on Instagram for @ @ @ @ @ favorite .

Each week, you, the readers, submit to our caption contest. But you’re weary, and your face muscles ache from trying to grin and bear your way through 2020. So we called in the professionals—professional comedians, that is—to caption this cartoon by E. S. Glenn. Follow @newyorkermag on Instagram for a chance to pick your favorite.


newyorker--2020-12-21--Singing, Spieling, and Shvitzing on the Low Cut Connie Live Stream

Today ’ s Pandemic Person of the Year started out as a cross-eyed boy in Cherry Hill , New Jersey , with a bullyable surname and actorly dreams .
He moved to New York in 1998 to enroll in the Experimental Theatre Wing at N.Y.U .
One night , he and some fellow-students were recruited to work as runners at the reopening of the night club Limelight .
The naked-but-for-body-paint dance troupe being late , the students , attired in black turtlenecks and slacks , were asked to improvise some moves .
Our honoree , dutifully Dietering , looked down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ He was staring directly at me , with a look on his face that said , ‘ What is this garbage ?
’ ” This was his second encounter with the future President .
When he was nine or so , his parents took him , as they often did , to Atlantic City .
“ We ’ re in the Taj Mahal , and Trump shows up , with Marla Maples .
And so I—and I don ’ t remember doing this , my parents tell this story—I stood on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hey , asshole !
Fuck you !
’ ” In New York , our awardee worked around town as a pianist , eventually under the stage name Ladyfingers ; for a time , he had a regular gig at a now defunct gay bar called Pegasus , across from Bloomingdale ’ s .
They hired him because he looked good , but he could play anything .
“ I have a very spongy brain , ” he said the other day .
“ If I ’ ve heard it , I can play @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t know I had these skills.
” These fans , who include Bruce Springsteen , Elton John , and Barack Obama , will now guess , correctly , that this Pandemic Person of the Year is Adam Weiner , the songwriter , singer , piano player , and chief showman behind the band—and occasional solo act—Low Cut Connie .
His sixth album , “ Private Lives , ” came out this fall .
One track , “ Look What They Did , ” laments the mess that Trump and others left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has had some chart success and has made ( and even topped ) some year-end best lists .
And yet , for whatever reason , Weiner , who is forty , has never had a record deal .
( Several albums ago , he started his own label . )
What has enabled him to show off his spongy brain , as well as his chops and his bountiful good vibes—Little Richard meets Mr. Rogers , maybe—is his twice-weekly interactive live stream , called “ Tough Cookies , ” which he began in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the income of performing live , he started broadcasting from the guest room of his row house , in South Philadelphia .
“ We had no plan , ” he said .
He ’ d driven up to Manhattan to accept the honor , in a midtown pocket park .
He had on a black hoodie , a jean jacket , faded black jeans , and a silver mask , which seemed almost to reach the front edge of his Jerry Lee Lewis curls .
“ We just turned the phones on and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ audience or laughter or applause .
I didn ’ t know how many people were watching or if they ’ d like it .
All I knew was that at the end of the hour I was lying on the floor in my underwear , covered in sweat.
” The next stream attracted a hundred and fifty thousand views .
Realizing that this was going to become a regular thing , he christened it “ Tough Cookies.
” “ I named it after the people who watch it , ” he said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ who pinned their phones , in ziplocks , to the wall , and viewers in more than forty countries , including Lebanon and Afghanistan .
“ Tough Cookies ” is a homespun variety show : music , comedy , interviews , spieling , shvitzing , stripping .
Dressed in a white tank top , or his grandfather ’ s maroon Pierre Cardin bathrobe , surrounded by oddments and schwag , Weiner hams it up on an upright piano , accompanied by a guitar player , Will Donnelly , who keeps the beat with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a tambourine on the other .
“ We shoot it on our phones , ” Weiner said .
“ I don ’ t even use a mike .
There ’ s no lighting , no makeup , just chest hair hanging out .
It ain ’ t shit.
” He interviews guests : Darlene Love , Dion , Nils Lofgren , Nick Hornby .
Mathew Knowles , Beyoncé ’ s dad , came on to talk about the checkered role , in the industry , of skin complexion .
The death of George @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , brought some extra seriousness to the proceedings , but the aim remained uplift .
After almost seventy episodes , Weiner has played some six hundred covers , sometimes in medley—say , “ War Pigs ” into “ Macho Man ” —and a hundred originals .
A disquisition on the origins of Cardi B ’ s “ WAP ” one night took him back to 1929 , to “ Wet It , ” by the female impersonator Frankie ( Half Pint ) Jaxon .
“ I feel like I left the music business @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business , ” Weiner said .
“ I feel like I have my own TV show.
” He was sort of amazed that he hadn ’ t heard from HBO .
The owner of Mimi ’ s , a piano bar in midtown , let him in out of the cold , and Weiner noodled on the keys , under a plaque that read “ What is your favorite song ?
” He found this one hard to answer .
Prince ?
“ Stardust ” ?
“ Maybe Aretha : ‘ Niki Hoeky.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s , a decked-out figure in high heels , of indeterminate everything , strutted past .
Weiner ’ s eyes , visible between mask and pompadour , followed .
“ That ’ s what I miss about New York , ” he said .
“ The mystery.
” ♦

Adam Weiner Illustration by João Fazenda
Today’s Pandemic Person of the Year started out as a cross-eyed boy in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with a bullyable surname and actorly dreams. He moved to New York in 1998 to enroll in the Experimental Theatre Wing at N.Y.U. One night, he and some fellow-students were recruited to work as runners at the reopening of the night club Limelight. The naked-but-for-body-paint dance troupe being late, the students, attired in black turtlenecks and slacks, were asked to improvise some moves. Our honoree, dutifully Dietering, looked down from the stage and saw Donald Trump: “He was staring directly at me, with a look on his face that said, ‘What is this garbage?’ ”
This was his second encounter with the future President. When he was nine or so, his parents took him, as they often did, to Atlantic City. “We’re in the Taj Mahal, and Trump shows up, with Marla Maples. And so I—and I don’t remember doing this, my parents tell this story—I stood on my chair and yelled out, ‘Hey, asshole! Fuck you!’ ”
In New York, our awardee worked around town as a pianist, eventually under the stage name Ladyfingers; for a time, he had a regular gig at a now defunct gay bar called Pegasus, across from Bloomingdale’s. They hired him because he looked good, but he could play anything. “I have a very spongy brain,” he said the other day. “If I’ve heard it, I can play it. Until recently, my fans didn’t know I had these skills.”
These fans, who include Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, and Barack Obama, will now guess, correctly, that this Pandemic Person of the Year is Adam Weiner, the songwriter, singer, piano player, and chief showman behind the band—and occasional solo act—Low Cut Connie. His sixth album, “Private Lives,” came out this fall. One track, “Look What They Did,” laments the mess that Trump and others left behind in Atlantic City. The album has had some chart success and has made (and even topped) some year-end best lists. And yet, for whatever reason, Weiner, who is forty, has never had a record deal. (Several albums ago, he started his own label.)
What has enabled him to show off his spongy brain, as well as his chops and his bountiful good vibes—Little Richard meets Mr. Rogers, maybe—is his twice-weekly interactive live stream, called “Tough Cookies,” which he began in March. Deprived of the thrill and the income of performing live, he started broadcasting from the guest room of his row house, in South Philadelphia.
“We had no plan,” he said. He’d driven up to Manhattan to accept the honor, in a midtown pocket park. He had on a black hoodie, a jean jacket, faded black jeans, and a silver mask, which seemed almost to reach the front edge of his Jerry Lee Lewis curls. “We just turned the phones on and hung out. And there was no audience or laughter or applause. I didn’t know how many people were watching or if they’d like it. All I knew was that at the end of the hour I was lying on the floor in my underwear, covered in sweat.” The next stream attracted a hundred and fifty thousand views. Realizing that this was going to become a regular thing, he christened it “Tough Cookies.” “I named it after the people who watch it,” he said. Among them were nurses in Covid wards who pinned their phones, in ziplocks, to the wall, and viewers in more than forty countries, including Lebanon and Afghanistan.
“Hon, it’s not daytime yet. Those are just our neighbor’s Christmas lights.” Cartoon by Arantza Peña Popo Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
“Tough Cookies” is a homespun variety show: music, comedy, interviews, spieling, shvitzing, stripping. Dressed in a white tank top, or his grandfather’s maroon Pierre Cardin bathrobe, surrounded by oddments and schwag, Weiner hams it up on an upright piano, accompanied by a guitar player, Will Donnelly, who keeps the beat with a stomp box under one foot and a tambourine on the other. “We shoot it on our phones,” Weiner said. “I don’t even use a mike. There’s no lighting, no makeup, just chest hair hanging out. It ain’t shit.” He interviews guests: Darlene Love, Dion, Nils Lofgren, Nick Hornby. Mathew Knowles, Beyoncé’s dad, came on to talk about the checkered role, in the industry, of skin complexion.
The death of George Floyd, and the tumult that followed, brought some extra seriousness to the proceedings, but the aim remained uplift. After almost seventy episodes, Weiner has played some six hundred covers, sometimes in medley—say, “War Pigs” into “Macho Man”—and a hundred originals. A disquisition on the origins of Cardi B’s “WAP” one night took him back to 1929, to “Wet It,” by the female impersonator Frankie (Half Pint) Jaxon.
“I feel like I left the music business and I’m in the entertainment business,” Weiner said. “I feel like I have my own TV show.” He was sort of amazed that he hadn’t heard from HBO.
The owner of Mimi’s, a piano bar in midtown, let him in out of the cold, and Weiner noodled on the keys, under a plaque that read “What is your favorite song?” He found this one hard to answer. Prince? “Stardust”? “Maybe Aretha: ‘Niki Hoeky.’ ”
Later, outside Mimi’s, a decked-out figure in high heels, of indeterminate everything, strutted past. Weiner’s eyes, visible between mask and pompadour, followed. “That’s what I miss about New York,” he said. “The mystery.” ♦


Briefly Noted Book Reviews

The Walker , by Matthew Beaumont ( Verso ) .
Contending that our “ increasingly authoritarian ” cities , with their omnipresent surveillance and commodified spaces , make the archetype of the flâneur—a privileged stroller who observes without being threatened— “ unsustainable , ” this heady blend of history and theory seeks more fitting literary models .
The convalescent in Poe ’ s “ The Man of the Crowd ” is a figure whose illness allows him , finally , to experience the city outside the daily grind .
H. G. Wells ’ s “ The Invisible Man ” portrays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Beaumont depicts the city as unremittingly hostile , but his ambulatory antiheroes hint at ways in which we might reclaim the streets , declaring our freedom , as he puts it , “ to wander and wonder at the same time.
” Waste , by Catherine Coleman Flowers ( New Press ) .
Making the case for investment in America ’ s rural population , this memoir moves from the author ’ s youthful civil-rights activism to her continuing fight against wastewater-infrastructure injustice .
In Lowndes County , Alabama , where Flowers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of septic systems are failing or inadequate .
She documents conditions—raw sewage backing up into homes and yards—that led , in 2017 , to the country ’ s first outbreak of hookworm in decades .
Indisputable connections emerge between our nation ’ s history of slavery and sharecropping and the current inaccessibility , for some , of “ the right to flush and forget.
” The Orchard , by David Hopen ( Ecco ) .
The adolescent narrator of this début novel , Aryeh ( Ari ) Eden , grew up in an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his family moves to the fictional town of Zion Hills , Florida , Ari is confronted with the privilege of his new yeshiva classmates .
( “ Everyone has a Chagall , ” someone tells him . )
His religious piety is soon challenged by secular distractions—Aston Martins , Olympic-sized swimming pools , house parties .
Ari seeks out the “ tragic grandeur ” conferred by experience , even as he realizes that it disrupts his ideals and his sense of self .
“ I ’ d been filled , finally , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a blurry night out in Key West .
“ And yet along the way I ’ d been emptied out.
” Stillicide , by Cynan Jones ( Catapult ) .
One meaning of “ stillicide ” is a continual dripping of water , and the chapters of this novel collect like rainwater to tell the story of a dystopian Britain stricken by drought .
Entrepreneurs propose razing homes to bring a giant iceberg into a London “ Ice Dock , ” a plan that sparks protests .
Jones mostly focusses on the disempowered—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter she ’ ll never send , a scientist who hopes his discovery will stop the Ice Dock , an elderly couple who refuse to leave their home despite rising sea levels .
A laborer whose work on the Ice Dock will mean the destruction of his lover ’ s house muses , “ How often the process of construction starts with destruction .
”

The Walker, by Matthew Beaumont (Verso). Contending that our “increasingly authoritarian” cities, with their omnipresent surveillance and commodified spaces, make the archetype of the flâneur—a privileged stroller who observes without being threatened—“unsustainable,” this heady blend of history and theory seeks more fitting literary models. The convalescent in Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” is a figure whose illness allows him, finally, to experience the city outside the daily grind. H. G. Wells’s “The Invisible Man” portrays a walker who is hounded and hunted. Beaumont depicts the city as unremittingly hostile, but his ambulatory antiheroes hint at ways in which we might reclaim the streets, declaring our freedom, as he puts it, “to wander and wonder at the same time.”
Waste, by Catherine Coleman Flowers (New Press). Making the case for investment in America’s rural population, this memoir moves from the author’s youthful civil-rights activism to her continuing fight against wastewater-infrastructure injustice. In Lowndes County, Alabama, where Flowers grew up, some ninety per cent of septic systems are failing or inadequate. She documents conditions—raw sewage backing up into homes and yards—that led, in 2017, to the country’s first outbreak of hookworm in decades. Indisputable connections emerge between our nation’s history of slavery and sharecropping and the current inaccessibility, for some, of “the right to flush and forget.”
The Orchard, by David Hopen (Ecco). The adolescent narrator of this début novel, Aryeh (Ari) Eden, grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn. When his family moves to the fictional town of Zion Hills, Florida, Ari is confronted with the privilege of his new yeshiva classmates. (“Everyone has a Chagall,” someone tells him.) His religious piety is soon challenged by secular distractions—Aston Martins, Olympic-sized swimming pools, house parties. Ari seeks out the “tragic grandeur” conferred by experience, even as he realizes that it disrupts his ideals and his sense of self. “I’d been filled, finally, with experience,” he says, after a blurry night out in Key West. “And yet along the way I’d been emptied out.”
Stillicide, by Cynan Jones (Catapult). One meaning of “stillicide” is a continual dripping of water, and the chapters of this novel collect like rainwater to tell the story of a dystopian Britain stricken by drought. Entrepreneurs propose razing homes to bring a giant iceberg into a London “Ice Dock,” a plan that sparks protests. Jones mostly focusses on the disempowered—a dying nurse who writes her husband a letter she’ll never send, a scientist who hopes his discovery will stop the Ice Dock, an elderly couple who refuse to leave their home despite rising sea levels. A laborer whose work on the Ice Dock will mean the destruction of his lover’s house muses, “How often the process of construction starts with destruction.”


The Mail

Larissa MacFarquhar ’ s article is a sensitive examination of the complexities of the child-custody cases that play out in civil courts when ultra-Orthodox Jewish parents make the wrenching decision to leave their community , and it adds an important dimension to the growing body of films , memoirs , and scholarship on the subject of those who abandon religion ( “ Solomon ’ s Dilemma , ” December 7th ) .
But in one description MacFarquhar ’ s casual tone could give a wrong impression .
Voicing one source ’ s account of friends who have experienced a crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hasidism , MacFarquhar writes that they “ violated Shabbos all the time , watching sports , and just lied to their families about it.
” In my book about religious Jews who lead double lives , “ Hidden Heretics , ” I find that people who have lost their faith but have decided to stay don ’ t “ just ” lie to their spouses and children .
The emotional and moral reasoning behind their lies is complex , and it is based , above all , on a desire to avoid causing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are afraid of the outside world , and others , especially women with few resources , are afraid of losing their children in the kinds of divorce scenarios that MacFarquhar describes .
Indeed , many hidden heretics have told me that , despite their doubts about the truth of the Torah , they believed that staying in their community was the most ethical thing to do .
Ironically , by choosing to stay , these people expose their children to their changing understanding of choice , individuality , tolerance , and critical thinking—thereby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hasidic community offers a life style of unparalleled social cohesion , but , as MacFarquhar shows , the community ’ s tight embrace all too often strangles those who don ’ t fit in .
However , when individuals choose to stay and demand acceptance , Orthodox communities slowly change over time .
As the executive director of Eshel , a nonprofit that creates community for L.G.B.T.Q .
Orthodox Jews , I have seen the beginnings of evolution .
My organization runs a retreat that was mentioned in the article ; its existence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jews who would like to find ways to stay in their communities .
The work we do with Orthodox parents of L.G.B.T.Q .
people and with Orthodox rabbis shows that these communities can become more accepting of a diverse membership .
I left the Hasidic world at the age of forty-five , and I have seven children .
Hasidic kids are born into a system that withholds the education they need to function in the secular world .
The status quo is upheld by politicians who turn a blind eye to yeshivas that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , even though the schools are ostensibly accredited and supported by public funds .
Many Hasidic adults can barely read or write in English .
What ’ s important to remember is that Hasidim are not in a quaint world apart from ours ; they are Americans .
Young adults are leaving ultra-Orthodox communities without the skills they need to survive .
They face homelessness , depression , addiction , and suicide .
MacFarquhar ’ s article depicts the lives of these apostates and their communities in a lyrical way , but avoids @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At the end , the piece becomes a love story , as if in love there is resolution .
I am a lesbian .
I left my community in order to survive .
Letters should be sent with the writer ’ s name , address , and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail @ newyorker.com .
Letters may be edited for length and clarity , and may be published in any medium .
We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we can not reply to every letter .

On Becoming a Heretic
Larissa MacFarquhar’s article is a sensitive examination of the complexities of the child-custody cases that play out in civil courts when ultra-Orthodox Jewish parents make the wrenching decision to leave their community, and it adds an important dimension to the growing body of films, memoirs, and scholarship on the subject of those who abandon religion (“Solomon’s Dilemma,” December 7th). But in one description MacFarquhar’s casual tone could give a wrong impression. Voicing one source’s account of friends who have experienced a crisis of faith but haven’t left Hasidism, MacFarquhar writes that they “violated Shabbos all the time, watching sports, and just lied to their families about it.” In my book about religious Jews who lead double lives, “Hidden Heretics,” I find that people who have lost their faith but have decided to stay don’t “just” lie to their spouses and children. The emotional and moral reasoning behind their lies is complex, and it is based, above all, on a desire to avoid causing hurt to their loved ones. Some are afraid of the outside world, and others, especially women with few resources, are afraid of losing their children in the kinds of divorce scenarios that MacFarquhar describes. Indeed, many hidden heretics have told me that, despite their doubts about the truth of the Torah, they believed that staying in their community was the most ethical thing to do. Ironically, by choosing to stay, these people expose their children to their changing understanding of choice, individuality, tolerance, and critical thinking—thereby changing ultra-Orthodoxy itself.
Ayala Fader
Professor of Anthropology
Fordham University
New York City
Belonging to a Hasidic community offers a life style of unparalleled social cohesion, but, as MacFarquhar shows, the community’s tight embrace all too often strangles those who don’t fit in. However, when individuals choose to stay and demand acceptance, Orthodox communities slowly change over time. As the executive director of Eshel, a nonprofit that creates community for L.G.B.T.Q. Orthodox Jews, I have seen the beginnings of evolution. My organization runs a retreat that was mentioned in the article; its existence is proof that there are queer Orthodox Jews who would like to find ways to stay in their communities. The work we do with Orthodox parents of L.G.B.T.Q. people and with Orthodox rabbis shows that these communities can become more accepting of a diverse membership.
Miryam Kabakov
Northampton, Mass.
I left the Hasidic world at the age of forty-five, and I have seven children. Hasidic kids are born into a system that withholds the education they need to function in the secular world. The status quo is upheld by politicians who turn a blind eye to yeshivas that do not adhere to state educational standards, even though the schools are ostensibly accredited and supported by public funds. Many Hasidic adults can barely read or write in English. What’s important to remember is that Hasidim are not in a quaint world apart from ours; they are Americans. Young adults are leaving ultra-Orthodox communities without the skills they need to survive. They face homelessness, depression, addiction, and suicide. MacFarquhar’s article depicts the lives of these apostates and their communities in a lyrical way, but avoids hard numbers and the sordid political collusion. At the end, the piece becomes a love story, as if in love there is resolution. I am a lesbian. I left my community in order to survive.
Leah Lax
Houston, Texas
•
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.


newyorker--2020-12-21--A Year Without Clothes

A Year Without Clothes

In early March of this year , Céline Dion stepped out onto the streets of Manhattan in an outfit I can only describe as high equestrian camp : double-breasted cape-dress with a matching tattersall dickey from Michael Kors , knee-high riding boots , a gold-buckled cordovan belt , and a jaunty little felt fedora cocked over one eye .
Dion was in town for a week to perform at the Barclays Center as part of her “ Courage ” tour , and for several days in a row she turned the city sidewalks into her own personal catwalk , peacocking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the Kors ensemble , she posed with her arms on her hips , fanning out the cape behind her like a superheroine , and then waggled the garment in front of her body like a toreador .
Other times , she strutted through midtown in head-to-toe daisy print ; a flamingo-pink Peter Do ensemble ; and , most dramatically , a floral Oscar de la Renta skirt that she paired with a fresh bouquet of peonies , which she let fall around her feet as she twirled .
Dion ’ s impromptu @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other than her own amusement , a playful impulse to pluck items straight from the Paris runways and show people how they were meant to be worn .
As is often the case with Dion , her bravado was easy for the press to mock , or at least to view as mawkish ; she seemed to be walking a delicate tightrope between celebrating high fashion and parodying it .
When I look back on those images now , though , they mostly just feel like postcards from another universe .
I thought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was setting a tone for the year , throwing down a gauntlet with her ecstatic , effulgent expression of style .
What I did not know then is that in the weeks following , New York would shut down to slow the spread of COVID-19 , and Dion would cancel all her remaining tour dates .
As it turned out , Dion ’ s fashion statement was not an opening salvo but a kind of punctuation mark on a year abruptly interrupted .
I had been planning to write about Dion ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a piece about the singer ’ s emergence , in recent years , as an unlikely high-fashion icon .
But , as the coronavirus accelerated , the subject suddenly seemed very silly .
I ’ d spoken to Dion ’ s stylists , Pepe Muñoz and Sydney Lopez , but the juicy details they gave me ( that Dion , for instance , had dreamed up the feather hat at one in the morning the night before she wore it , and Muñoz had to send a frantic , wee-hour email to milliner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to wait .
These were the early , terrifying days of the pandemic , when even first responders could not locate N95 masks , and medical staffers were forced to wear trash bags , snorkel masks , and swim goggles as ad-hoc P.P.E .
I turned my attention to writing about the designer Christian Siriano , who had quickly converted his midtown atelier into a mask-making factory .
I was lucky enough to be able to stay home—I work from home even in normal times—but for a while I continued to get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somewhere to go .
I put on turtlenecks and polka-dot dresses and even continued to wear my beloved high-waisted jeans , which made me feel pulled together , but squeezed my midsection like it was a tube of toothpaste as I sat inside all day .
( Walking pants and sprawling pants , I discovered , are entirely different species . )
On Twitter , as a pick-me-up , I posted a call for people to dress up on Sundays in their own homes and share a picture with the hashtag # distancebutmakeitfashion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d expected took the assignment : “ I did it and it felt fantastic , like weirdly wonderful , ” the writer Laura Lippman later said in an interview . )
The prompt was intended to provide a small diversion from fear and boredom—and , I hoped , encouragement to stay indoors and away from other people—and it was , for a while , heartening to scroll through pictures of people standing in their living rooms in ball gowns and boleros .
But , as quarantine stretched on , I stopped posting .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ pull toward Lycra spandex .
I quietly closed the closet door on my dresses and glitter boots and structured jackets and instead began raiding my “ soft drawer , ” where I keep balled-up elastic-waist pants and long , shapeless caftan-type garments .
I gave up hard-bottomed shoes for the marshmallow bounce of shearling-lined boots .
The only time I dress up in “ outdoors ” clothing now is to hop into a Zoom meeting or get-together .
I toss on a satiny blouse , big earrings , and a swipe of red @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t fully in it .
Is an outfit still stylish if it is only a simulacrum of what you would wear to go somewhere ( and if you rip it off right after the call ends and change into a stained sweatshirt ? )
.
Fashion , for me , has always been about the experience of moving through the world in clothes ; as the infamous editrix Diana Vreeland said , “ You got ta have style .
It helps you get down the stairs.
” How does style change when you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are plenty of people who were confined to their homes long before the pandemic began , and some of them have helped demonstrate , through social media , how it is possible to cultivate a striking sense of flair even in isolation .
You need not have a cadre of paparazzi waiting for you on a New York street corner to turn a look .
But what I ’ ve felt , perhaps , is a yearning for the spontaneous ways that clothing and public life can collide—the feeling , say , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a holiday party , wearing something sparkly and foolish underneath a puffer coat .
There have still been fashion trends peculiar to this year—cashmere leggings , Hill House Home ’ s nap dresses ( which sold a million dollars ’ worth of product within hours when they restocked in October ) , that strawberry dress that looked great on TikTok , celebrities matching their masks to their outfits on Instagram to “ attend ” virtual awards shows .
The former Band of Outsiders designer Scott Sternberg pivoted to sweats with his new company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time to become a sensation .
The handbag designer Telfar Clemens changed the luxury-goods market forever with his innovative “ Bag Security ” program , which insures that everyone who wanted a Telfar tote can have one without having to pay exorbitant resale prices online .
Sites that push pre-owned clothing , like thredUP and Poshmark , have thrived as people have less to spend and more time to dig through digital bargain bins .
( Just a week ago , Siriano , the fashion world ’ s quarantine M.V.P.
, partnered with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” logo in an attempt to add a new allure to secondhand items . )
But for every brand that successfully pivoted there are others that have struggled .
By May , clothing sales had dropped sixty-three per cent compared to 2019 , and , though those numbers have risen somewhat since , retail is still hurting .
The Neiman Marcus Group , J .
Crew , Brooks Brothers , John Varvatos , Men ’ s Warehouse , and J. C. Penney are among the companies who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hundred and seventy stores after a fifty-seven-per-cent plummet in sales .
Even brands that sell loungewear suffered ; Victoria ’ s Secret reported a forty-six-per-cent decline in revenue .
Some stores in New York City have reopened ( and some elsewhere never closed at all ) , but many storefronts still sit dormant , or have closed their doors forever .
When we emerge from this period , the thoroughfares where we used to stroll and window-shop will be much changed , particularly in areas where independent designers had stores .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her masterpiece “ Seeing Through Clothes , ” that “ when you are dressed in any particular way at all , you are revealed rather than hidden.
” Even as I have embraced the ethos of loose , drapey everything these past months , I have not completely let go of the pleasures of getting dressed and of being seen .
Lately , I ’ ve settled for a look I like to call “ old Hollywood dressing table , ” which involves a procession of vintage pajamas and robes .
I keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ velvet house shoes , from the British footwear designer Olivia Morris , which cost two hundred and forty-five British pounds and are barely available and are even more impractical , but which I ’ m convinced would change my life should they come into my possession .
Not long ago , I also bought a blue velvet cloak from the nineteen-thirties on eBay .
I had nowhere to wear it—I still don ’ t .
It ’ s too heavy for my radiator-steamed apartment , and it would look ridiculous for a trip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve been visiting it in my closet , imagining the adventures we may have together when I can go to theatres and dark bars again .
I ’ ve started to sort through my old high-heeled boots and bedazzled dresses—not culling them , because any item that whispers of future outings sparks joy for me , but reorganizing for the day I can wear them again .
It ’ s not a Céline Dion moment I ’ m craving , swathed in the newest , flashiest designer goods .
I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and I miss the clothing I already have .
• The funniest New Yorker cartoons , as chosen by our Instagram followers .
• Helen Rosner on the best cookbooks .
• Ian Crouch recounts the best jokes of the year .
• Sheldon Pearce on the albums that helped him navigate a lost plague year .
• New Yorker writers on the best books they read this year .

In early March of this year, Céline Dion stepped out onto the streets of Manhattan in an outfit I can only describe as high equestrian camp: double-breasted cape-dress with a matching tattersall dickey from Michael Kors, knee-high riding boots, a gold-buckled cordovan belt, and a jaunty little felt fedora cocked over one eye. Dion was in town for a week to perform at the Barclays Center as part of her Courage tour, and for several days in a row she turned the city sidewalks into her own personal catwalk, peacocking and hamming it up for photographers. In the Kors ensemble, she posed with her arms on her hips, fanning out the cape behind her like a superheroine, and then waggled the garment in front of her body like a toreador. Other times, she strutted through midtown in head-to-toe daisy print; a flamingo-pink Peter Do ensemble; and, most dramatically, a floral Oscar de la Renta skirt that she paired with a fresh bouquet of peonies, which she let fall around her feet as she twirled.
Dion’s impromptu clothing parade seemed to have no point other than her own amusement, a playful impulse to pluck items straight from the Paris runways and show people how they were meant to be worn. As is often the case with Dion, her bravado was easy for the press to mock, or at least to view as mawkish; she seemed to be walking a delicate tightrope between celebrating high fashion and parodying it. When I look back on those images now, though, they mostly just feel like postcards from another universe. I thought, at the time, that Dion was setting a tone for the year, throwing down a gantlet with her ecstatic, effulgent expression of style. What I did not know then was that, in the following weeks, New York would shut down to slow the spread of COVID-19, and Dion would cancel all her remaining tour dates. As it turned out, Dion’s fashion statement was not an opening salvo but a kind of punctuation mark on a year abruptly interrupted.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
I had been planning to write about Dion’s grand sartorial promenade as part of a piece about the singer’s emergence, in recent years, as an unlikely high-fashion icon. But, as the coronavirus accelerated, the subject suddenly seemed very silly. I’d spoken to Dion’s stylists, Pepe Muñoz and Sydney Lopez, but the juicy details they gave me (that Dion, for instance, had dreamed up the feather hat at one in the morning the night before she wore it, and Muñoz had to send a frantic, wee-hours e-mail to a milliner to get one in time) would have to wait. These were the early, terrifying days of the pandemic, when even first responders could not locate N95 masks, and medical staffers were forced to wear trash bags, snorkel masks, and swim goggles as ad-hoc P.P.E. I turned my attention to writing about the designer Christian Siriano, who had quickly converted his midtown atelier into a mask-making factory.
I was lucky enough to be able to stay home—I work from home even in normal times—but for a while I continued to get dressed every morning as if I had somewhere to go. I put on turtlenecks and polka-dot dresses and even continued to wear my beloved high-waisted jeans, which made me feel pulled together, but squeezed my midsection like it was a tube of toothpaste as I sat inside all day. (Walking pants and sprawling pants, I discovered, are entirely different species.) On Twitter, as a pick-me-up, I posted a call for people to dress up on Sundays in their own homes and share a picture with the hashtag #distancebutmakeitfashion. (More people than I’d expected took the assignment: “I did it and it felt fantastic, like weirdly wonderful,” the writer Laura Lippman later said in an interview.) The prompt was intended to provide a small diversion from fear and boredom—and, I hoped, encouragement to stay indoors and away from other people—and it was, for a while, heartening to scroll through pictures of people standing in their living rooms in ball gowns and boleros. But, as quarantine stretched on, I stopped posting. It seemed futile to fight the entropic pull toward Lycra spandex. I quietly closed the closet door on my dresses and glitter boots and structured jackets and instead began raiding my “soft drawer,” where I keep balled-up elastic-waist pants and long, shapeless caftan-type garments. I gave up hard-bottomed shoes for the marshmallow bounce of shearling-lined boots.
The only time I dress up in “outdoors” clothing now is to hop into a Zoom meeting or get-together. I toss on a satiny blouse, big earrings, and a swipe of red lipstick, but my heart isn’t fully in it. Is an outfit still stylish if it is only a simulacrum of what you would wear to go somewhere (and if you rip it off right after the call ends and change into a stained sweatshirt?). Fashion, for me, has always been about the experience of moving through the world in clothes; as the infamous editrix Diana Vreeland said, “You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs.” How does style change when you’re pleasing yourself alone? There are plenty of people who were confined to their homes long before the pandemic began, and some of them have helped demonstrate, through social media, how it is possible to cultivate a striking sense of flair even in isolation. You need not have a cadre of paparazzi waiting for you on a New York street corner to turn a look. But what I’ve felt, perhaps, is a yearning for the spontaneous ways that clothing and public life can collide—the feeling, say, of riding the subway, en route to a holiday party, wearing something sparkly and foolish underneath a puffer coat.
There have still been fashion trends peculiar to this year—cashmere leggings, Hill House Home’s nap dresses (which sold a million dollars’ worth of product within hours when they restocked in October), that strawberry dress that looked great on TikTok, celebrities matching their masks to their outfits on Instagram to “attend” virtual awards shows. The former Band of Outsiders designer Scott Sternberg pivoted to sweats with his new company, Entireworld, at just the right time to become a sensation. The handbag designer Telfar Clemens changed the luxury-goods market forever with his innovative “Bag Security” program, which insures that everyone who wanted a Telfar tote can have one without having to pay exorbitant resale prices online. Sites that push pre-owned clothing, such as thredUP and Poshmark, have thrived as people have less to spend and more time to dig through digital bargain bins. (Just a week ago, Siriano, the fashion world’s quarantine M.V.P., partnered with thredUP to create a new “Thrifted” logo in an attempt to add a new allure to secondhand items.)
But for every brand that successfully pivoted there are others that have struggled. By May, clothing sales had dropped sixty-three per cent compared to 2019, and, though those numbers have risen somewhat since, retail is still hurting. The Neiman Marcus Group, J. Crew, Brooks Brothers, John Varvatos, Men’s Warehouse, and J. C. Penney are among the companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this year. H&M closed a hundred and seventy stores after a fifty-seven-per-cent plummet in sales. Even brands that sell loungewear suffered; Victoria’s Secret reported a forty-six-per-cent decline in revenue. Some stores in New York City have reopened (and some elsewhere never closed at all), but many storefronts still sit dormant, or have closed their doors forever. When we emerge from this period, the thoroughfares where we used to stroll and window-shop will be much changed, particularly in areas where independent designers had stores.
The fashion historian Anne Hollander wrote, in her masterpiece “Seeing Through Clothes,” that “when you are dressed in any particular way at all, you are revealed rather than hidden.” Even as I have embraced the ethos of loose, drapey everything these past months, I have not completely let go of the pleasures of getting dressed and of being seen. Lately, I’ve settled for a look I like to call “old-Hollywood dressing table,” which involves a procession of vintage pajamas and robes. I keep clicking on the link for these pine-green velvet house shoes, from the British footwear designer Olivia Morris, which cost two hundred and forty-five pounds and are barely available and are even more impractical, but which I’m convinced would change my life should they come into my possession. Not long ago, I also bought a blue velvet cloak from the nineteen-thirties on eBay. I had nowhere to wear it—I still don’t. It’s too heavy for my radiator-steamed apartment, and it would look ridiculous for a trip to the UPS Store. But I’ve been visiting it in my closet, imagining the adventures we may have together when I can go to theatres and dark bars again. I’ve started to sort through my old high-heeled boots and bedazzled dresses—not culling them, because any item that whispers of future outings sparks joy for me, but reorganizing for the day I can wear them again. It’s not a Céline Dion moment I’m craving, swathed in the newest, flashiest designer goods. I’m homesick for the city I live in, and I miss the clothing I already have.
2020 in Review


newyorker--2020-12-21--What Are Artists For?

What Are Artists For?

Your first impression of “ Engineer , Agitator , Constructor : The Artist Reinvented , 1918-1939 , ” a vast and exciting show , at the Museum of Modern Art , of interwar Soviet and European graphic design , may combine déjà vu and surprise .
You likely know the look , loosely termed Constructivist : off-kilter geometric shapes , vectoring diagonals , strident typography ( chiefly blocky sans serif ) , grabby colors ( tending to black and orangeish red ) , and collaged or montaged photography , all in thrall to advanced technology and socialist exhortation , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ film .
But you won ’ t have seen most of the works here .
About two hundred of the roughly three hundred pieces on view were recently acquired by the museum from the collection of Merrill C. Berman , a Wall Street investor and venture capitalist .
Fresh images catch the eye , as do unfamiliar names .
The scope is encyclopedic , surveying a time of ideological advertisement , when individuals sacrificed their artistic independence to programs of mass appeal .
“ The title ‘ artist ’ is an insult , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Heartfield declared in 1920 .
Grosz subsided into satirical painting and drawing , but Heartfield became a dedicated propagandist who cast Hitler as a puppet of capitalism and savaged centrist opposition to the tyrant ’ s rise .
The cover of the show ’ s catalogue features Heartfield ’ s photograph of a worker ’ s soiled , forward-grasping hand , which was used for a poster promoting the Communist Party in a Weimar election in 1928 .
The image seems rather more menacing than rallying .
It is at an extreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ design , which generally took less inflammatory forms in Germany and other European democracies .
These countries incubated movements that are well represented in the exhibition but tangential to its Russian focus—Futurism , Dada , the Bauhaus .
In Russia , there was no partisan campaigning because there was only one party .
After 1917 , it won the ardent allegiance of a generation of creative types who reconceived of the artist as a self-abnegating servant of the masses and the state—or who professed to , whatever their private misgivings .
What is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s show stalks the question .
The Revolution usurped or bypassed the energies of the Russian Empire ’ s wartime avant-gardes , most prominently the metaphysically spirited Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich , who is allowed a perfunctory cameo in “ Engineer , Agitator , Constructor , ” with one small abstract painting , from 1915 .
His day was over with the coup of Constructivism .
He continued to support the Revolution , but his manner was adjudged too esoteric for proletarian tastes .
Central to the new dispensation was the extravagantly gifted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artist , despite his militant posturing .
In 1921 , he painted three monochrome canvases—red , yellow , and blue—and announced that that was that for painting , which was henceforth obsolete .
He also posed for a chic photograph as a platonic socialist worker , sporting a uniform of his own design and standing amid his own abstract sculptures .
The celebrity gesture ran riskily afoul of Soviet impersonality and was not repeated .
When , in 1932 , he was accused of “ bourgeois formalism , ” he retreated to sports @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was denied his movement colleague Gustav Klutsis , a master of photomontage whose worshipful imagery of Josef Stalin didn ’ t forestall his execution , on unclear grounds , in 1938 .
Rodchenko ’ s diminution illustrates the Soviet tragedy of formal and visionary genius that was ground underfoot even before the inception , in 1928 , of Stalin ’ s ruinous first Five Year Plan , and of the coerced visual banalities of socialist realism .
Not that the MOMA show indulges in historical drama .
Its focus is scholarly , separately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credit to Soviet social reform of the time , include a great many women .
It builds knowledge .
Meaning is up to us .
Art happens when someone wants to do it .
Advertising and propaganda start from given ends and work backward to means .
There ’ s just enough genuine art in the exhibition to hone this point .
The small Malevich , of cockeyed red and black squares on white , elates .
Then there ’ s my favorite work , which I ’ d like to steal : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Popova ’ s “ Production Clothing for Actor No .
7 ” ( 1922 ) .
A black-caped , robotic figure extends a square red sleeve like a smuggled Suprematist banner .
Personal flair and practical use merge .
( What would Popova ’ s fate have been if she hadn ’ t died of scarlet fever in 1924 , at the age of thirty-five ?
The Moscow art world adored her . )
Among a few other serious gems included for passing reference , the curators Jodi Hauptman , Adrian Sudhalter , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from 1921 , “ Composition with Red , Blue , Black , Yellow , and Gray.
” I wonder if the painting will give you , as it does me , a shock of recognition of true artistry : decisions made not for but with a purpose , as captivating in the context of happy workers working , a heroic soldier standing at the ready , and Stalin strolling among his subjects as is Wallace Stevens ’ s jar in Tennessee .
Art unaffected by personality is sterile .
That needn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a clear-eyed choice made on principle .
Many things are more important than art .
Today , imperatives of racial and social justice preoccupy numerous artists .
Hard light is wanted in a crisis ; away with moonbeams .
What needs saying conditions how it ’ s said , which means accepting the chance that , should conditions change , the work may prove to be ephemeral .
No living artist I know of , however fervently activist , is renouncing art as a distraction from moral commitment , as the more extreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of recent polemical art suggests a use-by date that is not far in the future .
Aesthetic judgment , based in experience , confirms differences between what is of its time and what , besides being of its time , may prove timeless .
I feel that our present moment , marked by imbroglios of art and politics , forces the issue , even in face of tendencies a century old .
As the exhibition unfolds , artists-penitent , shrinking from the perils of originality , dominate in Russia .
Careerist designers teem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exceptions as László Moholy-Nagy and Kurt Schwitters .
I know that I ’ m casting a wet blanket on work that might be—and surely will be—enjoyed without prejudice for its formal ingenuity and rhetorical punch .
The architectonic and typographical razzmatazz of the Austrian-born American Herbert Bayer , the Dutch Piet Zwart , the Polish Władysław Strzemiński , and the Italian Fortunato Depero afford upbeat pleasures , and a strikingly sensitive Dada collage by the German Hannah Höch feels almost overqualified for its company .
Strictly as a phenomenon in design , Constructivism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s just that the historical outcomes of the period get my goat , as does the show ’ s sidelining of first-rate artists .
Don ’ t look for anything by Vladimir Tatlin , Malevich ’ s innovational peer in sculpture : not thematic enough , plainly .
The show ’ s freest and most prolific stylist is also , for me , the most annoying : El Lissitzky .
A star mentee of Malevich ’ s who immigrated to Berlin in 1921 , Lissitzky popularized the Constructivist look as an international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : jazzy formal clichés that hugely influenced commercial culture .
At MOMA , approaches to abstraction—logo-like ciphers by the Hungarian László Peri , and stark geometries by the Polish Henryk Berlewi—deliver bright promise , then evanesce .
The show has a posthumous heart .
It is lodged in the remains of the great poet Vladimir Mayakovsky , who put an omnibus ego to work for emancipatory personal and social consciousness .
Passionately embracing Bolshevism , he wrote successful plays , delivered stirring speeches , supervised important magazines , and became wildly popular .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Lenin in 1921 , he collaborated with Rodchenko , contributing snappy slogans to advertisements for light bulbs , cocoa , and cigarettes : highlights of the show .
Even in love poems , his free-verse style—a sort of machine-tooled lyricism—stuns and arouses .
( The American poet James Schuyler deemed the effect an “ intimate yell.
” ) Politically , Mayakovsky can seem a fabulously specialized instrument of worldly transformation .
In 1926 , he called his mouth “ the working class ’ s / megaphone.
” He wrote a three-thousand-line panegyric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1930 , increasingly subject to hard-line , and official , attacks for “ petit bourgeois ” subjectivity and other supposed apostasies , he was meekly policing his unauthorized feelings : “ stepping / on the throat / of my own song.
” A tortuous love life may have helped drive him—on April 14 , 1930 , at the age of thirty-six—to shoot himself .
But it ’ s impossible not to think of him as martyred by his own high church : a trashed prototype of the Soviet new man .
His funeral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regime ’ s history .
In the catalogue , the poets Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky offer their fine translation of a poem that was found with Mayakovsky ’ s body .
It shows what was lost to the world with his suicide .
The poem , with its comic and grand interiority , helps me imagine the unexpressed states of mind and soul of so many artists who were inspired and then blighted by a common cause :

Your first impression of “Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented, 1918-1939,” a vast and exciting show, at the Museum of Modern Art, of interwar Soviet and European graphic design, may combine déjà vu and surprise. You likely know the look, loosely termed Constructivist: off-kilter geometric shapes, vectoring diagonals, strident typography (chiefly blocky sans serif), grabby colors (tending to black and orangeish red), and collaged or montaged photography, all in thrall to advanced technology and socialist exhortation, in mediums including architecture, performance, and film. But you won’t have seen most of the works here. About two hundred of the roughly three hundred pieces on view were recently acquired by the museum from the collection of Merrill C. Berman, a Wall Street investor and venture capitalist. Fresh images catch the eye, as do unfamiliar names. The scope is encyclopedic, surveying a time of ideological advertisement, when individuals sacrificed their artistic independence to programs of mass appeal.
“The title ‘artist’ is an insult,” the German Communists George Grosz and John Heartfield declared in 1920. Grosz subsided into satirical painting and drawing, but Heartfield became a dedicated propagandist who cast Hitler as a puppet of capitalism and savaged centrist opposition to the tyrant’s rise. The cover of the show’s catalogue features Heartfield’s photograph of a worker’s soiled, forward-grasping hand, which was used for a poster promoting the Communist Party in a Weimar election in 1928. The image seems rather more menacing than rallying. It is at an extreme of the era’s politically weaponized design, which generally took less inflammatory forms in Germany and other European democracies. These countries incubated movements that are well represented in the exhibition but tangential to its Russian focus—Futurism, Dada, the Bauhaus. In Russia, there was no partisan campaigning because there was only one party. After 1917, it won the ardent allegiance of a generation of creative types who reconceived of the artist as a self-abnegating servant of the masses and the state—or who professed to, whatever their private misgivings. What is an artist, anyway? MOMA’s show stalks the question.
“The Hand Has Five Fingers,” by John Heartfield, from 1928. Art work from the Merrill C. Berman Collection; courtesy the Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Revolution usurped or bypassed the energies of the Russian Empire’s wartime avant-gardes, most prominently the metaphysically spirited Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich, who is allowed a perfunctory cameo in “Engineer, Agitator, Constructor,” with one small abstract painting, from 1915. His day was over with the coup of Constructivism. He continued to support the Revolution, but his manner was adjudged too esoteric for proletarian tastes. Central to the new dispensation was the extravagantly gifted Alexander Rodchenko, who was really—almost helplessly—an artist, despite his militant posturing. In 1921, he painted three monochrome canvases—red, yellow, and blue—and announced that that was that for painting, which was henceforth obsolete. He also posed for a chic photograph as a platonic socialist worker, sporting a uniform of his own design and standing amid his own abstract sculptures. The celebrity gesture ran riskily afoul of Soviet impersonality and was not repeated. When, in 1932, he was accused of “bourgeois formalism,” he retreated to sports photography, finding a safe harbor that was denied his movement colleague Gustav Klutsis, a master of photomontage whose worshipful imagery of Josef Stalin didn’t forestall his execution, on unclear grounds, in 1938. Rodchenko’s diminution illustrates the Soviet tragedy of formal and visionary genius that was ground underfoot even before the inception, in 1928, of Stalin’s ruinous first Five Year Plan, and of the coerced visual banalities of socialist realism. Not that the MOMA show indulges in historical drama. Its focus is scholarly, separately documenting creators who, as one redemptive credit to Soviet social reform of the time, include a great many women. It builds knowledge. Meaning is up to us.
Art happens when someone wants to do it. Advertising and propaganda start from given ends and work backward to means. There’s just enough genuine art in the exhibition to hone this point. The small Malevich, of cockeyed red and black squares on white, elates. Then there’s my favorite work, which I’d like to steal: a version of the sublimely sophisticated Liubov Popova’s “Production Clothing for Actor No. 7” (1922). A black-caped, robotic figure extends a square red sleeve like a smuggled Suprematist banner. Personal flair and practical use merge. (What would Popova’s fate have been if she hadn’t died of scarlet fever in 1924, at the age of thirty-five? The Moscow art world adored her.) Among a few other serious gems included for passing reference, the curators Jodi Hauptman, Adrian Sudhalter, and Jane Cavalier hazard a Piet Mondrian from 1921, “Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray.” I wonder if the painting will give you, as it does me, a shock of recognition of true artistry: decisions made not for but with a purpose, as captivating in the context of happy workers working, a heroic soldier standing at the ready, and Stalin strolling among his subjects as is Wallace Stevens’s jar in Tennessee.
Art unaffected by personality is sterile. That needn’t constitute a failure. It may be a clear-eyed choice made on principle. Many things are more important than art. Today, imperatives of racial and social justice preoccupy numerous artists. Hard light is wanted in a crisis; away with moonbeams. What needs saying conditions how it’s said, which means accepting the chance that, should conditions change, the work may prove to be ephemeral. No living artist I know of, however fervently activist, is renouncing art as a distraction from moral commitment, as the more extreme Constructivists did. But a good deal of recent polemical art suggests a use-by date that is not far in the future. Aesthetic judgment, based in experience, confirms differences between what is of its time and what, besides being of its time, may prove timeless. I feel that our present moment, marked by imbroglios of art and politics, forces the issue, even in face of tendencies a century old.
“Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack—Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension,” by Kazimir Malevich, from 1915. Art work from © the Museum of Modern Art; licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, N.Y.
As the exhibition unfolds, artists-penitent, shrinking from the perils of originality, dominate in Russia. Careerist designers teem in the West, with such fecund exceptions as László Moholy-Nagy and Kurt Schwitters. I know that I’m casting a wet blanket on work that might be—and surely will be—enjoyed without prejudice for its formal ingenuity and rhetorical punch. The architectonic and typographical razzmatazz of the Austrian-born American Herbert Bayer, the Dutch Piet Zwart, the Polish Władysław Strzemiński, and the Italian Fortunato Depero afford upbeat pleasures, and a strikingly sensitive Dada collage by the German Hannah Höch feels almost overqualified for its company. Strictly as a phenomenon in design, Constructivism and its offshoots merit celebration. It’s just that the historical outcomes of the period get my goat, as does the show’s sidelining of first-rate artists. Don’t look for anything by Vladimir Tatlin, Malevich’s innovational peer in sculpture: not thematic enough, plainly. The show’s freest and most prolific stylist is also, for me, the most annoying: El Lissitzky. A star mentee of Malevich’s who immigrated to Berlin in 1921, Lissitzky popularized the Constructivist look as an international style that wasn’t about anything: jazzy formal clichés that hugely influenced commercial culture. At MOMA, approaches to abstraction—logo-like ciphers by the Hungarian László Peri, and stark geometries by the Polish Henryk Berlewi—deliver bright promise, then evanesce.
The show has a posthumous heart. It is lodged in the remains of the great poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, who put an omnibus ego to work for emancipatory personal and social consciousness. Passionately embracing Bolshevism, he wrote successful plays, delivered stirring speeches, supervised important magazines, and became wildly popular. During the New Economic Policy, instituted by Lenin in 1921, he collaborated with Rodchenko, contributing snappy slogans to advertisements for light bulbs, cocoa, and cigarettes: highlights of the show. Even in love poems, his free-verse style—a sort of machine-tooled lyricism—stuns and arouses. (The American poet James Schuyler deemed the effect an “intimate yell.”) Politically, Mayakovsky can seem a fabulously specialized instrument of worldly transformation. In 1926, he called his mouth “the working class’s / megaphone.” He wrote a three-thousand-line panegyric in praise of Lenin. But by 1930, increasingly subject to hard-line, and official, attacks for “petit bourgeois” subjectivity and other supposed apostasies, he was meekly policing his unauthorized feelings: “stepping / on the throat / of my own song.” A tortuous love life may have helped drive him—on April 14, 1930, at the age of thirty-six—to shoot himself. But it’s impossible not to think of him as martyred by his own high church: a trashed prototype of the Soviet new man. His funeral was one of the largest in the regime’s history.
In the catalogue, the poets Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky offer their fine translation of a poem that was found with Mayakovsky’s body. It shows what was lost to the world with his suicide. The poem, with its comic and grand interiority, helps me imagine the unexpressed states of mind and soul of so many artists who were inspired and then blighted by a common cause: