4
Fridav. November 12, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Painter capitalizes on the fine art of bad taste
By LEROY JOHNSTON
Kitsch (noun)-artistic or literary material held to be of low quality, often produced to appeal to popular taste. Bustle and dismaliment, in contrast to moralism and alziness.
The question that must be answered when viewing Michael Otto's paintings is: Is this a glorification of kitch or is there something more?
OTT'S WORK is being exhibited at the gallery, 7E, 7th St., until the end of the month.
Clearly the man has seen a lot of kitch. All of us have. Remember those postcards that show a cowboy punching cattle on a horse, and you know where it came from, caption, 'Greetings from Kansas!'
Now remember the dog you saw smashed in the middle of the road while you were on a family vacation. You were just a kid then. Your parents may have bought a postcard of a scenic spot you visited later. That dog sure looked strange on that postcard.
Mike Okt thinks so, too. He painted it. It's called "dog gone."
"That's what artists always leave out of a scene," he said.
OTT HAS traveled extensively in the United States and Europe. He seems older than his 30 years, but younger than a chairman of the Kansas Institute of art to be.
The vacation theme is central to many of his snapshot-like paintings. In 'Spot on
Vacation," an alert munt pokes his head into a
Giant Canyon panorama.
"I was at the Grand Canyon, watching these people taking pictures," Ott said. "They were taking turns in the picture. Finally it was the dog's turn. It didn't make much of an impression on me at that time."
THE PANORAMIC postcard view is altered again in "Sag Movie." A movie screen has been set up across a half-frozen canyon stream. The title explains the rest.
"There are a lot of images that stick in my mind that I use over and over. That valley curtain (by Christo) did have a profound effect on me."
"Ott combined this image with one from his youth to create "Stag Movie."
One grips the humor in Ott's work easily enough, but has Ott succeeded in raising his work above the level of the kltsch it draws from? The question is difficult.
"When I was a kid we used to go see stag films in a barn after work," he said.
"Art is like a vacation to me," he said. "I don't see any reason to have everyday things on your walls. It should transport you to another place and time, where you can forget about your problems—just like a vacation."
WHAT ABOUT "Stag Film"?
"If I'd really painted it up, then it would be klick. Like, if I'd put in a stag standing knee-deep in the stream watching the film. I'm not interested so much in the intellectual implications; basically I'm after the dramatic."
And so Ollt continues to tread the fine line between kischo and art. His sense of humor, sometimes macabre, is perhaps the clearest element lifting his work out of the realm of illusionism, the idea of beauty be less significant, and their obscurity works against them.
MUCH OF both the success and failure of Ot's paintings is due to his slick, tacky painting style, which either works perfectly or not at all. It is difficult to reconcile a striving for both pathos and drama with a kinky sense of humor.
Some of Ot's smaller paintings suffer as a result of this flat, rapid paint application. They appear to have been knocked out in a couple of hours—a problem the larger paintings do not nave—and this appearance leads to an occasional loss of credibility.
PAINTING as a genre is not without its con-game aspects. All painters have similar problems achieving credibility. A good painting is always a gamble, and should show it. A painting that sets no unique or difficult problem for itself risks losing the emotional response of the viewer—and consequently its power.
In Ott's work these issues serve well to separate the meaningful from the less meaningful. Paintings like "Born Free" and "Foodloose," both of them smaller, personal and obscure, fall flat trying to evoke a strong response.
OTT HAS carved for himself a unique area of sensibility both in concept and execution. His strength can only fall when he understands the path and lets the resulting indecision show.
Arts & Leisure
'Marathon Man' hurt by its script, directing
By CHUCK SACK
"Marathon Man" is a curiosity shop of a movie. Why it doesn't quite work is less puzzling than why it works at a store.
William Goldman's thriller about a Jewish college student who gets sucked into an ex-Nazi's scheme to retrieve his family's palm metal material. But add actor Dustin Hoffman and director John Schlesinger—rewritten for the first time since "Midnight Cowboy"—and you have the opportunity to access that Hollywood dotes on.
ACTUALLY, Goldman's script (adapted from his own novel) could have been handed to almost any young actor and hack director. The results have been at least as satisfying.
Schlesinger does handle actors well, and with a strong cast that includes Roy Scheider, William Devare, Marvel Keller and Laurence Olivier, he obtains a fine set of performances. Unfortunately, they are larcely wasted.
"Marathon Man" hammers Schlesinger because it highlights his weaknesses. The story lacks the sensitive, quirky characters Schlesinger probes well and the plot threads are too entangled for him to keep straight. Worst of all the script action, crisp action scenes, and as the film demonstrates, Schlesinger is a bumbling director with such scenes.
THE SCRIPT is so involved with the chaotic international plotline that the actors don't get it. They are in a world of or any time to do the building.
Babe Levy (Hoffman), the college student, and his older brother Doc (Scheider) the most complete characters, yet despite five sepi-toned flashbacks by cinematographer Conrad Hall, we don't know what the characters tick.
Does Babe have serious aspirations of being a marathon runner? Does Doc Lie to his brother about his true occupation because he's afraid that Babe will reject him?
Hoffman and Scheider are resourceful enough to cover some of the holes, but not all. Full-bodied characters single-handedly.
IN FACT, the actors who fare best are Olivier and Devane. Olivier plays the role of Szell, the Nazi forced out of hiding, depicting him as the ultimate evil, cardboard figure called for in the script. Somehow he is not known, but he's the villain, so Olivier's tight-lipped, sadistic portrait satisfies our expectations.
We don't care any more about the fates of Szell and Janeaway than we do about Babe and Doc. But the crucial difference is that the villains don't ask for sympathy, and we don't have to feel guilty when we can't muster it.
Devane, too, gets by with minimal acting because Janeaway, the agent he portrays, is surrounded in mystery. Any attempt to flesh out the character would only heighten his incarceration so that he can on a smooth charm, correctly assuming that we'll learn he knows the answers.
IF CHARACTER is sacrificed for plot in "Marathon Man,"
though, it is a damnable trade. One would expect that, given so little else of interest, Schlesinger and Goldman would keep the story straight. But they don't even manage this. How dare the organization that carries diamonds to war criminals? Does he know that Babe's girlfriend, Elsa Keller), a courier? Why does New York's diamond district when he could find out what he wants to know by using the phone?
The story lurches along, leaving the audience to savor the gore left in Seall's wake as a substitute for true suspense. Schlesinger delivers the gore all right, but not with any flourish. He's too tasteful to just watch, but she spatters the screens with blood. In fact, the best violent scenes are those where Schlesinger suggests violence instead of trying to depict it.
YET FOR all these faults,
"Marathon Man" does provide
some entertainment. There's
more to it than mostly by default, as one of the box-office hits. But those of us who don't consider ticket sales to be the final arbiter of how it found an audience.
The thriller plot idea is good, but this movie isn't very thrilling. The acting is very good, but the cast doesn't get much opportunity to act. The direction is weak where it needs to be firm and strong where it needs to be light, it's that the undercurrent of a political theme exists, but it's nothing that the Dirty Harry films can't do better. Maybe that's the real problem.
This Week's
Highlights
Concerts
JIMMY SPHEERIS performs tonight at 8:30 in Hoch Auditorium
ELLA FITZGERALD sings tomorrow night at 8 in the Music Hall, Kansas City, Mo.
THE UNIVERSITY STRING QUARTET, composed of KU faculty members, performs Monday night at 8 in Swarthwout
ELLY AMELING. Dutch theater as part of concert. Concert at 1:30 a.m. Sunday afternoon at 3:10 in the University Theatre, Murphy
Nightclubs
DAVID WEHR performs his senior recital on the piano Tuesday night at 8 in Swarthout Recital Haji.
W O R M W W R A N C H
WRANGLERS, a country rock
and swing band, play Monday
at 7 p.m. and until 2 a.m.
at the 7th Spirit.
STEPHEN KORT, pianist,
performs a faculty recital
Thursday night at 8 in
Baworth Recruit Hall.
RHYTHEM FUNCTION, a Kansas City Reggae band, plays tonight and tomorrow night from 9 to 12am On the Wall PORK AND BEAN BAND plays country rock from 9 to 12 Monday night, and Tuesday is the Hall's Free Folk Night, featuring STEVE CORNMEI and GREG ALLEN. The FREE BLUEGRASS JAM is from 7:30 to 12 Wednesday night at the Hall.
SHARI WEELBOW, vocalist and guitar player, plays tomoray night and Thursday at the Rubayat Inn, the Rubayat Inn, Ramada Inn.
EMIL ORTH, jazz tombone player from Tennessee plays bass guitar. Paul Gray's Jazz Place, Paul Gray's is Jazz the JAZZ MASSION.
TOMMY JOHNSON AND THE EXPERIMENT play tomorrow night from 2 to 11 at the Eldridge House Club.
ON TAP plays dance bobo music tonight and tomorrow night from 9 to 12 at the Nest, Kansas Union.
Theater
Films
"RASHOMON", "a Japanese drama," is performed tonight and tomorrow night at 8 in the University Theatre in Murphy.
"GODSPELL," a musical celebration of Christ's life and teachings, is performed tonight at 8 by the University Christian Movement at the United Industries Building, 2104 Orest Ave.
JUST IMAGINE-The mating of cinema's weakest genres—the musical and the science fiction film—produced by its offspring Stuart John Garlick and Maureen O'Sullivan.
**PRIMATES**=Under the cold eye of cinema verite director Frederick Wiseman, a research center's studies of the behavior of lower primates are brought to the screen in terrifyingly real environments where the animals seem more humane than their keepers.
THE KILLING--Stanley Kubrick's third film is a satire of the 1960s taut and very watchable, but lacking the imaginative dimensions of almost all his films. Sterling Hayden stars
THE RITZ–*A* 30s madcap comedy comes a '70s twist when the action is set in a gay hotel room, but the characters are "straight," and Rita Moreno does a dizzy fumy as a performer known as "The Pits."
Check ads for showtimes
The bandit Taiomaru (played by Peter Miner) after escaping from his bonds in "Rasbomon"
East meets West and fails
By GREGG HEJNA
Fay and Michael Kaini's translation of the play "Rashomon" opens tonight at the University Theatre. The KU production has undertaken the mammoth task of bringing Japanese to Western theater with the stylization of Japanese theater, and has fallen short.
"The problem with "Rashomon" is not so much that there are weaknesses in the play but where the weaknesses are.
In a complicated plot involving the telling of four "eyewitness" accounts of the murder of a Samurai warrior, Ralph has to roles with a different feeling with each version of the tale—a formidable task in itself, but one that is further complicated by the use of Japanese stylization during parts of the production.
Peter Miner's portrayal of Tajmarn, the bandit with a reputation longer than his sword, runs hot and cold—mostly cold. He is at his best only when he is before the unseen judge, telling his version of the tale.
The combination of Eastern and Western theater styles presents problems for actors. The two styles have an unbelievable amount of talent or at least a familiarity with both styles could tackle such a difficult role, and, for the most part, this production has neither.
His husky voice, which works the character to his advantage, is unusually effective. But he has a great knack for handling the case members, when he is
required to enter into the Japanese mode of theater.
His movements are too jerky and all too often resemble a defenseless human trying to be killed. He and Clifford Rhaeb, who plays the murdered man, lack the ginesse to carry off their victims' graves, grace and balance that is required by the Kabuki style.
gunnard's portraital of the murdered man is memorable only for his recitation from his grave of his version of the tale, a feat accomplished by some excellent sound work, enhancing what is otherwise a mediocre performance.
Blair, more than any other person on stage, is able to move with relative ease through the music that her character demands.
The only bright spot among the main actors is Rhonda Blair's performance as the murdered man's wife.
As the pivotal characters, Yoichi Fukunaga as the priest, Joseph Krause as the woodcutter and Quinn Cloefil as the wigmaster are less than captivating. None of their performance is particularly strong and Cloefil gives a singularly poor performance. His character resembles someone out of 'Fiddler on the Roof'
Roof" rather than a 10th-century Japanese play.
The two strongest points in the production are Andrew Tuskekul's excellent direction and Barry Bengtsen's set design by Barry Bengtsen.
Only Dayna Edwards' role as Blair's mother lends any believability to the minor characters. She is quite good as she pleads the unseen judge.
Tsukibai walks the tightrope between too much and too little directing. He knows his craft and displays it well, even though like a complicated jigsaw puzzle Tsukibai fits all the phases of the production
"Hashomun" is the KU entry to the American Theater Festival, and one can only hope that its competition is poor so it can retain the honors KU won with "Conponasma" last year.
Bengtens's set is an exercise in imagination. The set consists of more than 60 canvases from the Japanese watercolor style. The set is not only artistically beautiful, but also functional, and Bengtens shows that something extraordinary confines of the theater stage.
together to become one tight,
complete unit. His only flaw is
that he expects too much from
his actors.
"Radio Time Machine," a new KJHK series of half-hour Friday night programs, will feature on air the broadcasts spanning the 1950 to 1960 era. Kicking off the series will be a radio adaptation featuring the show's starring Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet.
KJHK to revive 'Golden Age'
By JEAN BLACKMORE
Beginning tonight at 8:30, area listeners will be invited to embark on a weekly nostalgic journey into the Golden Age of Radio—via an audio excursion courtesy of J.K.HK.
Staff Write
The problem was that entire radio shows used to be owned by single companies, and therefore included commercials for companies that are still active advertisers today, he said.
THE "FALCON" and the other broadcasts come from a collection gathered by series host Ted Culberson, Culberson, a KJHK program producer, that he conceived the series
last summer but that a legal problem delayed the program's airing this semester.
Because KJHK is noncommercial, commercials in the old broadcasts had to be dubbed over with public service announcements. Some of the advertising turned out that it couldn't be edited effectively, Culberson said.
Cunerson's show, then, didn't go on—that is, until several weeks ago.
educational institution such as KU, copyright laws say you can play most of the infused advertising."
In addition to 'Maltese Falcon,' listeners will be treated to a Thanksgiving show featuring Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore Nov. 19, a radio adaptation of the book "Frankenstein" Nov. 28, 1938 and Nov. 16, 1945. Brothers segment D, Dick Wilkinson and Diamond film from the mid-1940s Dec. 10, and a Christmas show featuring "Duffy's Tavern," a situation comedy starring Joan Bennett and Shirley Booth Dec. 17.
NEXT SEMESTER'S lineup includes more Marx Brothers shows, a series of Eddie Curtis' The Man Who Thought He Was
Robinson,* starting Edward G. Robinson in a dual role, and possibly Orson Welles' version of "Dracula."
Culberson said most of the shows in "Radio Time Machine" were prerecorded because of the advent of transcription in the 1940s. However, several of the programs, such as the Maltese Falcon, were recorded before it lived on audience. Audience and KJHK program director Rita Charlton say they hope "Radio Time Machine" will be a success.
"I THINK there is a lot of interest in such radio shows, especially in the younger audience that hasn't seen it yet," Culbertson said. "The drama is timeless and the comedy is still funny."