"The thing we long for, that we are
For one transcendent moment."
-- James Russell Lowell
Each year at this time, critics of art and culture are asked to assess events of the past year, usually in the form of a tried-and-true list: a Top 10, a best and worst, what (or who) is in or out.
This year, the arts staff of The Sun decided to try something different, something not so formulaic (we hope), to try to capture the essence of what caught its attention in 2002. Instead of compiling a laundry list, we asked our critics to recall only their most memorable moments of the year; moments that -- good, bad, poignant or pitiful -- resonated above the rest. Transcendent moments, if you will.
Their choices run the gamut, from a Backstreet Boy going solo to the powerful message of a 17th-century woman's masterpiece to the national gathering around the television set on Sept. 11, a year after. Whether they are moments you shared or missed, we hope they offer some insight into the year in arts, 2002.
THEATER
Baltimore -- Broadway-bound
The realization hit home during a pre-Broadway performance of Hairspray. This was in Seattle -- as far from Baltimore as you can go and still be in the continental United States. The cast broke into the opening song, "Good Morning Baltimore," and the audience loved it.
These were theatergoers who'd probably never heard of Formstone, much less The Buddy Deane Show, the Baltimore TV dance show that inspired John Waters' 1988 movie, which, in turn, inspired the musical. But their reaction made it clear that, like the movie, the musical was much more than a Baltimore phenomenon -- indeed, that it had the makings of a Broadway phenomenon. And that's what it became.
Universal Sondheim
The six productions mounted by the Kennedy Center's Sondheim Celebration last summer reinforced Stephen Sondheim's stature as this country's foremost living musical theater composer. But the imported production of Pacific Overtures by the New National Theatre, Tokyo, left no doubt that he also occupies a major place on the world stage.
This was exemplified by the ingenious staging of the number "Hello Again." In this second-act opener, a Japanese shogun was depicted as the hub of a wheel whose spokes were propelled by various Western admirals. It was a stunning metaphor for a show about an Eastern nation driven against its will by outside forces. And it demonstrated that Sondheim's work, like all great art, is not only open to diverse -- and in this case, foreign -- interpretations, it is often illuminated by them.
-- J. Wynn Rousuck
POP MUSIC
Kelly's big 'Moment'
Fresh-faced Texas waitress Kelly Clarkson triumphs in American Idol, a surprise TV hit that dominates water-cooler conversation across the country for weeks on end. Is this the beginning of a big career for Clarkson? Well, her single "A Moment Like This" ends up topping the Billboard charts. Stay tuned.
Boys to men?
'N Sync's Justin Timberlake and Backstreet Boy Nick Carter release solo albums within a week of each other this fall, definitively marking the demise of the boy-band phenomenon. Carter's Now or Never isn't as well-received as Timberlake's Justified, however. Working with hot R&B; producers like the ubiquitous Neptunes, Timberlake created a soulful work that's much different from his 'N Sync fare -- and may just be his ticket out of frothy boy-popdom.
Losing Lisa Lopes
With her wild fashion statements, rambunctious spirit and rat-a-tat raps, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes was the much-loved "crazy" person in the crazysexycool R&B; trio TLC. But on April 25, one of the genre's brightest stars was snuffed out when Lopes died in a Honduras car crash. She was a month shy of her 31st birthday.
-- Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
TELEVISION
An unforgettable journey
September 11, 2002. For 16 hours on this day, television took America on a marvelous journey of remembrance, sorrow, symbolism and resolution.
The coverage was uneven at some networks and cable channels, but collectively, by the end of the day, television linked those of us watching at home straight to the heart of our national civic life, and that is television serving one of its most profound functions.
The next time someone tells you about the media's short attention span or utter lack of memory, remind them of the coverage of Sept. 11, 2002, and the way network television offered us an informed, moving and generally thoughtful way with which to re-experience and contemplate the events of the previous year.
-- David Zurawik
FILM
A moving farewell
Last Orders has the most improbably beautiful climax in contemporary movies: Four blokes fight gusts and drizzle as they soldier down the sea walk in Margate, England, to empty an urn into the windswept waters. By then director Fred Schepisi has revealed the earthy gallantry within these life-worn friends and has unfolded their group sacraments so fully we sense the presence of the pal who isn't there as they commit his ashes to the deep.
A 'Spirited' Heroine
Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki's animated masterpiece, centers on a 10-year-old girl who discovers her courage when she leaps into a parallel universe and saves her parents from slaughter: They've been turned into pigs and fattened up for the kill. She proves her bravery when she hangs on to her friendship with a cocksure wonder boy even after she sees him transformed into a dragon -- and bloodied by a flock of paper birds.
A bad-guy ballet
The bravura opening sequence of Brian De Palma's Femme Fatale traces a jewel heist, at once glamorous and lowdown, that's executed in a bathroom during a gala at the Cannes Film Festival. As the bisexual antiheroine prepares for her no-holds-barred seduction of a female mark, she, her boss and their collaborators glide through an erotic dance scored to a Bolero-like rhythm and melody. De Palma turns bad behavior into a bang-up ballet.
-- Michael Sragow
An Oscar-worthy drama
When Halle Berry and Denzel Washington took home the Best Actress and Best Actor Oscars for 2001 at the Academy Awards in March, it made for a truly moving award show.
Berry stole the spotlight, breaking down repeatedly as she accepted the first Best Actress Oscar ever given to an African-American (richly deserved, for her devastating performance in Monster's Ball). But the high point of the evening was Washington's classy acceptance speech (he won for playing an abusive cop in Training Day) as he paid tribute to the venerable Sidney Poitier, who earlier in the evening had been given an honorary Oscar. The evening doesn't prove Hollywood is color-blind, but it suggested the possibility.
A fitting Memorial
At the Maryland Film Festival last May, men and women of a certain age wept as they watched the premiere of Charles Cohen and Joseph Mathew's The Last Season, a chronicle of the agonizingly slow final days of their beloved Memorial Stadium, home to the Orioles and Colts of not-so-distant yore.
The film offered a forum for both fans and athletes (including the late Johnny Unitas, in one of his last on-camera interviews) to reflect on how a horseshoe-shaped pile of steel and could come to mean so much to a city and its people. It also served as a welcome catharsis for sports fans longing for the days when rooting for the home team meant more than simply showing up at game time.
-- Chris Kaltenbach
CLASSICAL MUSIC
A Sorrowful Note
A few days into 2002 came the news that, after decades of volunteer service and just as a new chorus master was ably addressing its shortcomings, the BSO Chorus was to be disbanded. A flurry of explanations from BSO management made about as much sense as Trent Lott's chronic apologies.
Despite their sadness, the choristers managed to cap their legacy with a blazing swan song -- Carmina Burana -- in April. Ironic that their last words were about the harshness of fate.
'S Wonderful
Yuri Temirkanov usually presents a reserved, patrician image on the stage of Meyerhoff Hall, but he couldn't have looked much looser and more down-to-earth as he led the Baltimore Symphony in last month's all-Gershwin program.
Part of the fun was watching the conductor smile and gyrate through the music; the other part was hearing the hot performances he elicited from the orchestra, soloists and Morgan State University Chorus.
A religious experience
The U.S. premiere in October of Olivier Messiaen's Saint Francois d'Assise was everything it was cracked up to be. The 1983 opera's astonishing soundscape, its unabashed and affecting religiosity, its refusal to play by any of the standard operatic rules of plot or even length, all helped to make it unforgettable.
The San Francisco Opera's visually and aurally rich production, combined with Messiaen's prismatic music, created the kind of experience that truly qualifies as transcendent.
-- Tim Smith
ARCHITECTURE
Build it and they will come
Ten years after the opening of Oriole Park in Baltimore provided the model for a new kind of back-to-the-city major league ballpark, former Orioles Cal Ripken Jr. and Bill Ripken last summer offered an equally appealing model for the minor leagues in Aberdeen.
Combining the size and scale of a small town ballpark with craftsmanship and comforts worthy of the big leagues, Ripken Stadium, the $18 million home of the Aberdeen IronBirds, was a sell-out hit from opening night on -- a minor league ballpark with a major league feel.
But the best part of the park's design (by Tetra Tech Inc. of Christiana, Del.) is its family-friendly atmosphere, which gives parents a chance to leave their seats and move around without losing sight of the game or the kids.
Smother it
and they won't come
In November, Oriole Park's visibility was threatened by a developer's plan -- announced at a news conference by Mayor O'Malley -- to construct a 24-story, 750-room Hilton Hotel just north of the ballpark along Pratt Street between Paca and Howard streets.
A drawing shows the hotel potentially dwarfing the 1857 Camden Station, and obscuring views to and from the ballpark itself. City officials cautioned that the plan is preliminary and subject to change. Still, when the mayor touts a proposal in a news conference, it's hard for city planners to ask the developers to go back and rethink it. As worried urban designers have long warned, Oriole Park could be smothered by encroaching development, if city leaders aren't careful to protect it.
Demolish it,
and they will mourn
This was also the year that Memorial Stadium disappeared altogether, marking the end of a two-year demolition of the longtime home of the Orioles and Colts. The last wall came down in February, to make way for a residential community for the elderly and a YMCA.
Mayor O'Malley agreed to have letters from the old stadium transferred to a new memorial in Camden Yards, and ground was broken on Veterans Day. But the Camden Yards memorial will never match the power or monumentality of the Memorial Wall on 33rd Street.
Small wonder, then, that a 70-minute video documentary about the demolition of Memorial Stadium became a best-seller for local retailers this holiday season. People miss the stadium and want to hold on to its memory any way they can.
-- Edward Gunts
ART
Artful vengeance
Terrific artists pour themselves into their work. Rarely have I been more aware of that than one day last spring when I saw Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes (right) at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Artemisia, the greatest woman painter of the 17th century, was raped at 15. Her painting, based on the tale of a Jewish heroine who saved her people by killing the Assyrian general Holofernes, shows Judith grimly slitting her enemy's throat.
Suddenly, it was easy to imagine how the work reflected Artemisia's own turbulent life -- and how she literally took her revenge in her art.
A stereotypical shock
By photographing her own body in erotic poses drawn from '50s girlie magazines, New York-based artist Renee Cox used shock tactics to turn negative images into identity-affirming art.
The pictures of Cox in black leather corsets, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels (presented last winter in a exhibit at Baltimore's C. Grimaldis Gallery) grabbed our attention, forced us to confront stereotypical depictions of women and celebrated the photographer's roles as wife, mother and artist.
-- Glenn McNatt