Book review: 'Dinner in Camelot' is lukewarm

Dinner in Camelot is rather like one boring movie which makes you wonder if it's going to get any better.

It doesn't.

Those of us who were alive during the Kennedy presidential years, I think are always looking to recapture some of their magic and allure and relive the days of grace, intellect, and beauty which have been mostly absent since 1963.

Subtitled: The Night America's Greatest Scientists, Writers, and Scholars Partied at the Kennedy White House, this book, published last spring, describes (some but not enough of) the famous dinner on April 29, 1962 for all living Nobel Prize winners in the Western Hemisphere.

Many of the phrases are repeated twice or more. Some of the guests are described in too much detail: J. Robert Oppenheimer (atomic bomb), William and Rose Styron (Kennedy friends and authors; she wrote Dinner's foreword ), the Paulings (chemist and activists whose son, Linus C. Pauling, Jr. gave Dinner the highest possible rating on Amazon).

I didn't get Dinner at the library to read about them and their research. I got it to read about them, the hosts, and more about other guests, and the actual dinner: the menu, the flowers, the table settings, the guests' arrivals and their attire, the orchestra, the music program.  

What did the expanded portions about the scientists and their work have to do with the dinner? Had I wanted a book about science, I would have gone to the science section of the library.  

My impression was the author, Joseph A. Esposito, was trying to pad and fill pages which number 252 but they are little pages, at best no more than 150 real pages.

Did I miss the list of all the guests with a brief description of their occupations? Or, cause for their celebrity? Surely, it is there somewhere, and I overlooked it.  After all, this is about one fancy dinner party, likely the fanciest one in Washington when JFK said:  

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Anything about the children (other than Caroline playing with the elevator)?  More about the orchestra, please. Did Jacqueline Kennedy select the music?

Maybe, the next edition?  

Patricialesli@gmail.com

JFK photographs leave the Smithsonian today

 John F. Kennedy, 1961, by Shirley Seltzer Cooper (1919-1999)

In celebration of what would have been President John F. Kennedy's 100th birthday on May 29, 2017, the Smithsonian American Art Museum opened a collection of 77 photographs and other remembrances of the man whose spirit, intelligence, appreciation for the arts, and energy captivated America which has never been able to regain its sense of confidence and bravery since his death. 

Today is the last day for the display which is based on the book, JFK:  A Vision for America edited by Stephen Kennedy Smith, President Kennedy's nephew, and Douglas Brinkley, history professor at Rice University.

Most of the images in the exhibition are familiar to those who grew up with the ghost of JFK.  Below are a few of the less well-known pictures.

Kennedy for Congress headquarters, Boston, September, 1946, by Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection, Getty Images

In the galleries of the JFK exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie

John Kennedy, center, with his father, Joseph, and brother, Joseph Patrick, Jr., Brookline, MA, 1919/John f. Kennedy Library Foundation

In the galleries at the Smithsonian American Art Museum where JFK's familiar quotations are painted on the walls. This caption from June 14, 1956 reads:  Our Nation's first great politicians were also among the Nation's first great writers and scholars...Books were their tools, not their enemies.
/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Campaigning in Amherstdale, WVA, April, 1960, one of 53 campaign stops candidate Kennedy made in the state in one month.  There he learned something about the lives of coal miners which helped form his anti-poverty legislation when he became president/Life Picture Collection, Getty Images

During an airport campaign stop in Amarillo, TX on Nov. 3, 1960, JFK tried to restrain his running mate, Lyndon Johnson, incensed by Republican pilots revving up their engines to silence Democratic Party speakers/without credit line

Waiting for results the day after the election at Bobby and Ethel Kennedy's home in Hyannis Port, MA on Nov. 9, 1960 are (behind JFK, seated) Bobby and Ethel (in a sweater dress.  Ethel, age 89, is still living.) /Jacques Lowe (the Jacques Lowe Estate)

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Andre Malraux, the minister of cultural affairs for France, arranged the first tour of the Mona Lisa to the U.S. from the Louvre for a three-week run at the National Gallery of Art. This was taken on Jan. 8, 1963/Abbie Rowe,John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

At the entrance to the JFK exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/Photo by Patricia Leslie
 
The U.S. State Department has sent the images to Australia, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, Germany, Honduras, Kosovo, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Thailand, and Venezuela where they will travel throughout each country through 2018.

What: American Visionary:  John F. Kennedy's Life and Times

When: Closes Sunday, September 17, 2017. The museum is open from 11:30 a.m.- 7 p.m. every day.

Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20004

How much: No charge

For more information: 202-633-1000 or visit the website.

Metro station: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center

patricialesli@gmail.com

National Portrait Gallery celebrates Elaine de Kooning

 

Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989), John F. Kennedy #21, 1963, Michael and Susan Luyckx

 

I've been twice in five days.

 

If you lived in a generation with the halcyon JFK administration and recall the verve, the energy, spontaneity, glamour, and intelligence the Kennedys brought to the White House, you will not want to miss the nine portraits and drawings which Elaine de Kooning

(1918-1989) drew of President Kennedy in 1963, some larger than life and now on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

 

They are part of the major retrospective of Ms. de Kooning's portraits which went up last week, coinciding with Women's History Month and the artist's birthday on March 12.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy sat for "Elaine" (the name the Portrait Gallery says she likely would have favored) at the "Winter White House" in Palm Beach, Florida in late 1962 and early 1963. 

At the National Portrait Gallery,  Senior Curator Brandon Brame Fortune discusses Elaine de Kooning's John F. Kennedy, 1963.  This work usually hangs at one of the National Gallery's entrances and is part of the museum's permanent collection, "America's Presidents."/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Ms. de Kooning called President Kennedy "bigger than life....I was determined to...communicate his warmth, sharp wit, appraising glance, and something of the outdoor figure I saw." In the year after his death in 1963, the artist barely lifted a paint brush, and throughout her life, she kept the JFK portrait #21 (at the top of this page) which still belongs to her family. 

 

How she came to be selected to paint the president's portrait makes fascinating reading in the de Kooning catalogue ($49.95), but, in a few words: If it were not for the Harry S. Truman Library, there might not be a JFK series by Elaine de Kooning. According to the library's executive director at the time,  David D. Lloyd, she "obviously belongs in the new frontier of art," and she got the commission.  (Later, Ms. de Kooning said it would take a while for President Truman to grow accustomed to her style since he was not a big fan of modern art.) 

 

Pretty amazing stuff when one realizes she was competing against male artists in 1962.  Not only was she a woman, but her style was unconventional and one might say extreme for a presidential library located in the Midwest.

 

Once it got wind of the library's interest in a Kennedy portrait, the White House went to work right away to accommodate Ms. de Kooning, and off to Palm Beach she went.

 

Of the portraits and drawings in the show, the Truman JFK is my least favorite.  And why is that?

 

The whole thing is stilted and artificial.  The background of bright yellows and oranges overshadows the subject who sits in the center with a puzzled expression as if to say: "Why am I here?" He appears uncomfortable, thinner, more timid than the person we have come to know, lacking his customary confidence and sex appeal but with a fire (the assassination?) about to engulf and shroud him, his expression and bearing make more sense.

 

Yellow is not a strong color.  It's a weak color, especially compared to the vibrant and energetic greens and blues Ms. de Kooning used for the National Gallery's official JFK portrait that is part of the Gallery's series of presidential portraits.  (She is one of two female artists represented in the series, the other, Greta Kempton, who, coincidentally, painted President Harry S. Truman!)

 

The year attached to the Truman painting is 1963. The catalogue has a photograph of President Truman with Ms. de Kooning  at the presentation ceremony in 1965. 

 

The color catalogue features the works in the show, naturally, and an entire section is devoted to JFK, and Ms. de Kooning's experience trying to paint a figure constantly in motion: "He was--well, he was just a great-looking man." And "incandescent, golden." (The yellows in the Truman JFK?)

  

Ms. de Kooning was an abstract expressionist, known for her stark, angular, and bright renditions  of contemporary figures, usually men, who dominate the show.

 

"Men always painted the opposite sex, and I wanted to paint men as sex objects," the catalogue quotes her. (Rock on, Elaine!) She drew several men (Fairfield Porter, Johnny Snow) sitting with their legs spread, and when JFK drooped his leg over a beach chair and asked her "Is this pose all right?" Yes, it was! (Rock on, Elaine!)

 

 

The exhibition is not entirely about JFK, but that's who (or what) engulfs me. Three free films run continuously in a loop.

National Portrait Gallery Senior Curator Brandon Brame Fortune with Elaine de Kooning's The Burghers of Amsterdam Avenue, 1963, private collection.  Loosely modeled after two Dutch paintings, both titled The Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen, one executed by Govert Flinck (1615-1660) in 1642 and the other by Bartholomeus van der Helst(1613-1670) in 1655, both on loan from the Netherlands to the National Gallery of Art where they may be seen at the Seventh Street, NW entrance to the ground level through March 11, 2017/Photo by Patricia Leslie

 

Govert Flinck, Dutch (1615 – 1660)
The Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen, 1642, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Bartholomeus van der Helst, Dutch (1613 – 1670) The Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen, 1655, Amsterdam Museum on loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

In the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery, there was "a party going on" to celebrate Elaine de Kooning's birthday March 12 and the opening of a major retrospective of her portraits/Photo by Patricia Leslie

Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, welcomed guests to the reception for "Elaine de Kooning: Portraits." In a statement Ms. Sajet said the artist "ensured that a person's likeness was linked to their innate vitality and spirit."  The Gallery holds the largest museum collection of Ms. de Kooning's portraits, and the new exhibition includes rarely seen works on loan from the artist's estate and from family members/Photo by Patricia Leslie

At Elaine de Kooning's birthday party March 12, 2015 at the National Portrait Gallery/Photo by Patricia Leslie

At Elaine de Kooning's birthday party March 12, 2015 at the National Portrait Gallery/Photo by Patricia Leslie

A man in black (subject for the artist?) at Elaine de Kooning's birthday party March 12, 2015 at the National Portrait Gallery/Photo by Patricia Leslie

At Elaine de Kooning's birthday party March 12, 2015 at the National Portrait Gallery/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The Dolls, and Sean Lane and the Bay Jazz Project made music at the Elaine de Kooning party at the National Portrait Gallery, and this energetic gal with a bobbing head slashed her fiddle with a force to stun and silence the crowd/Photo by Patricia Leslie

William Wordsworth would have been proud of these golden daffodils at Elaine de Kooning's birthday party March 12, 2015 at the National Portrait Gallery. The colors match the yellows in Ms. de Kooning's JFK portrait on loan from the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri/Photo by Patricia Leslie

What: Elaine de Kooning:  Portraits

When: Now through January 10, 2016.  The National Portrait Gallery is open from daily from 11:30 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Saturday, March 21, 2015, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.:  Women's History Month Family Day, Kogod Courtyard

Friday, April 17, 2015, 12 p.m.: "In Her Own Light:  Liz Rideal on Elaine de Kooning."  Ms. Rideal from the National Portrait Gallery, London, is the author of How to Read Art (2015), and she will lead a tour of the de Kooning show.

Where: Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, 8th and F streets, N. W., Washington, D.C. 20004

How much: No charge

For more information: 202-633-1000 or visit the web site

Metro station: Gallery Place-Chinatown or walk 10 minutes from Metro Center

patricialesli@gmail.com