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Masses Yearning to Breathe Free Dancing ARTS&BOOKSF SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2018 :: LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR Myung J. Chun Los Angeles Times THE SPRUTH MAGERS gallery in L.A. altered its layout and operating hours to optimize light and space for this installation by 89-year-old artist Robert Irwin. ART, ALLURE EVERYWHERE Artist Robert Irwin wants to help people notice that ‘beauty is all around you’ BY DEBORAH VANKIN >>> Inside a gleaming San Diego tract home, 89-year-old artist Robert Irwin reclines in his favorite leather lounge chair, snug in his favorite worn baseball cap, sipping a fizzy Coke over ice. ¶ Irwin has lived here about 15 years “because my wife wanted kids on the block for our daughter,” he says of his now-23-year-old. Still, the cozy setting seems incongruous. With dark sunglasses donned and legs outstretched, Irwin appears less the renowned contemporary artist — the one Los Angeles County Museum of Art Director Michael Govan calls one of the most innovative artists of the ’60s and ’70s — and more a relaxed suburban- ite, tanned and ruggedly handsome. ¶ But Irwin’s minimalist, site-specific installations toy with the viewer’s sense of perception, and if you look more closely here, his home reveals Irwin-esque touches everywhere — beauty in the benign. Sunlight seeps in through glass panes, apropos for a California Light and Space artist; nearly every window has views of his wife’s garden, nodding to Irwin’s love of artful plantings, like his Central Garden at the Getty Center; the elongated entrance hallway fea- [See Irwin, F6] BOOK REVIEW Masses yearning to breathe free Dancing Stories of immigration are from topic pooled for an Actors’ Gang play-construction project, to topic ‘The New Colossus.’ By Walton Muyumba By Tim Greiving Upon opening “Feel Free,” A play in which the cast acts Zadie Smith’s new essay collec- out the real immigration stories of tion, you’ll be surprised to learn family and friends would seem to that she doubts her literary talent, have “Trump” written all over it, her critical acumen. I support that but “The New Colossus” — the lat- many literary writers are skeptical est from the Actors’ Gang, di- or anxious about their chosen pro- rected by founding artistic direc- fession. I know I am: Though some tor Tim Robbins — was actually invisible force compels us to cre- workshopped during the Obama ate, we writers sometimes feel our- years in reaction to the Syrian ref- selves fraudulent intellectually, ugee crisis. not knowing enough about any- The current president, whose thing to represent human experi- election campaign was driven by ence or critique the arts success- characterizations of Mexican im- fully. migrants as criminals and rapists, Smith ought not be one of just threw fossil fuel on the fire. those writers though. Since 2000, “The New Colossus” has 12 ac- Smith — London born and bred, tors, young and old, playing char- now a New Yorker — has pub- acters from different countries lished six substantial, exceptional and eras, all woven into a single works of fiction (including the 2012 narrative about escaping an op- novel “NW,” a tour de force for- pressive homeland, drawn to the Kent Nishimura Los Angeles Times mally and stylistically) and an ex- beacon above Ellis Island. THE STORIES of people around the world who seek America and its way of life are stirred into cellent work of nonfiction, “There’s [See ‘Colossus,’ F4] the melting pot of “The New Colossus,” an Actors’ Gang presentation directed by Tim Robbins. “Changing My [See Smith, F10] F10 SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2018 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR BOOK REVIEW BESTSELLERS LOS ANGELES TIMES FEB 11, 2018 weeks Fiction on list 1. Little Fires Everywhere by 20 Celeste Ng (Penguin Press: $27) A new family and an adoption upend a quiet Cleveland suburb. 2. The Immortalists by Chloe 3 Benjamin (Putnam: $26) Four siblings grapple with life after learning the dates of their demise from a psychic. 3. The Woman in the Window by 4 A.J. Finn (Morrow: $26.99) A twisted tale with Hitchcockian undertones features a Manhattan recluse who spends her days spying on neighbors. 4. City of Endless Night by Douglas 1 Preston & Lincoln Child (Grand Central: $28) A New York City detective and FBI agent track down a killer who decapitates victims. 5. The Largesse of the Sea Maiden 2 by Denis Johnson (Random House: $27) A posthumous short-story collection on mortality and transcendence from the late writer. 6. Origin by Dan Brown (Doubleday: 17 $29.95) A billionaire futurist and former student of professor of symbology Robert Langdon sends him on another quest to uncover the questions of human existence. 7. Munich by Robert Harris (Knopf: 2 $27.95) A spy novel set during British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s last-ditch negotiations with Hitler in 1938. 8. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor 73 Towles (Viking: $27) In 1922, a Russian count is sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel for the rest of his life. 9. The Wanted by Robert Crais 4 (Putnam: $28) A single mother hires P.I. Elvis Cole to investigate her teenage son who is on the run after a deadly crime spree. 10. Manhattan Beach by Jennifer 17 Egan (Scribner: $27) The first female diver at the Brooklyn Naval Yard during World War II seeks to uncover the reason for her father’s disappearance. Nonfiction Eamonn McCabe Getty Images 1. Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff 4 (Holt: $30) A journalists’ inside ENGLISH AUTHOR Zadie Smith is apprehensive about her intellectual authority yet demonstrates command in her essays. account of the dysfunctional first year of the Trump White House. 2. Barking to the Choir by Gregory 12 Boyle (S&S: $26) The Jesuit priest shares what working with gang members in Los Angeles A ‘Free’ stream of ideas has taught him about faith, compassion. 3. Power Your Tribe by Christine 1 Comaford (McGraw-Hill: $27) A [Smith, from F1] cial naivety of an English her parents, family life “is always set of neuroscience-based tools Mind: Occasional Essays” (2009). sentence intended to sound an event of some violence.” How to empower your workplace Feel Free: Essays team. Across her eighth book’s five as if it has been translated Zadie Smith then does the writer balance de- parts — “In the World,” “In the Au- from the French) — it’s sired freedoms, minimize family as 4. Leonardo da Vinci by Walter 15 Penguin Press: 464 pp, $28 dience,” “In the Gallery,” “On the almost enough to make you an event of violence, and access Isaacson (Simon & Schuster: Bookshelf,” “Feel Free” — Smith feel patriotic. joy? Smith has built a career as a $35) The award-winning biographer, known for profiling has distributed a slew of essays, re- These sentences aren’t from our various selves, Smith novelist dancing among these geniuses, turns his attention to views (including a folio of Harper’s merely decorative. They’re writes, is an everyday sensation, poles, dancing between (as the title da Vinci. columns) and lectures written important because they “yet it proves a tricky sort of prob- of one her essay names it) opti- from 2009-17. enable the comedy: when lem for those people who hope to mism and despair. 5. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a 43 F*ck by Mark Manson Over 435 pages, she covers you create this many com- make art. For though we know and Smith’s most recent novel, (HarperOne: $24.99) How Brexit and the waning British partments in each line, you recognize discontinuity in our own “Swing Time” (2016) is an attempt stopping to try to be positive all state; climate change; David have space for at least two lives, when it comes to art we are to wrestle with her doubts about the time will make us become Fincher, Facebook and internet jokes and one sly dig. deeply committed to the idea of fiction’s capabilities. To great ef- better, happier people. 2.0; Billie Holiday; Joni Mitchell; continuity. I find myself to be radi- fect, Smith achieves a formally uni- 6. The Book of Joy by Archbishop 56 Key & Peele; Schopenhauer, Char- Effectively a pastiche of St. cally discontinuous with myself — fied literary novel while simulta- Desmond Tutu and The Dalai lie Kaufman and stop-motion ani- Aubyn’s style, Smith’s close read- but how does one re-create this neously illustrating a unnamed Lama (Avery: $26) The Nobel mation; black beauty, black sor- ing illustrates and explicates si- principle in fiction?” This profes- narrator recognizing her discon- Prize-winning spiritual leaders share their wisdom. row, oil painting and a horror movie multaneously. She’s also perform- sional literary problem is en- tinuous selves. It’s a novel about about white liberals; the vagaries ing what I’ll call her “affective” meshed with Smith’s apprehen- dance that ends with a major char- 7. Devotion by Patti Smith (Yale 66 of lower-middle-class British life in critical practice. Smith seems to sion about her intellectual author- acter, Tracy, herself a lapsed pro- University Press: $18) The the 1980s and ’90s; literary fiction define that mode while appraising ity. fessional dancer, joyously whirling rocker-writer’s exploration of the nature of creative invention. and the discontinuous self; and the intellectual prowess on display In “Some Notes,” when Smith dervish-like with her children. Justin Bieber, Jay-Z and joy. in Geoff Dyer’s “Otherwise Known worries that she cannot develop a While Smith may not be able to as- 8. Astrophysics for People in a 38 Smith’s continuous stream of as the Human Condition: Selected connoisseur’s command of, say, suage her doubts about her au- Hurry by Neil Degrasse Tyson (Norton: $18.95) An productivity, her topical range, the Essays and Reviews.” When she Mitchell’s or David Byrne’s music, thority, she can “dance” with and easy-to-understand introduction accolades laureling her books, her writes that each of Dyer’s essays “is or some other subject, her anxiety around them.
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