Kara Walker: Pony tricks or Variations?

Kara Walker‘s work is rarely compared to Cindy Sherman‘s, but they share a similarity I’m not sure I like. ‘One trick pony’ is a hackneyed enough phrase, but that is what I called Cindy Sherman’s work in another post. Her images of herself in costume take on different guises, but ultimately they are all photos of Sherman as someone else. Kara Walker does not take photographs and does not use her own image, but instead takes the history of the South and gives it a modern, darker spin dealing with race and sexuality.

Walker’s body of work is more varied than Sherman’s. In her graphic depictions of gender and racial inequalities,Walker is recognized by her Victorian-style silhouettes but she has also used watercolors, video, painting, and shadow puppets. Her works range from letter sized to room sized. While often working in stark black on white, she also uses color.


In the autumn of 2007, Walker’s work not only opened in galleries in Manhattan, but she had a solo show at the Whitney and a self-curated show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seeing all her work was a treat. All the more reason why I regret drawing this comparison, but she and Sherman are both one trick ponies.


Her transgressive images of black stereotypes tell a part of Southern history that deserves to be told, but by now I think she has exhausted that combination of style and subject. By the time I had seen all of her work in its many forms and shows, I felt they were variations on a theme.

Variations on a theme are certainly a way of exploring a topic, but I’m not sure that Walker is saying something new. As I honestly enjoy her work ( and Sherman’s for that matter), maybe I’m being too harsh a judge. I just learned the value of such variations at a new play recently. On the other hand, even Beethoven stopped at 33. Perhaps a truly great artist knows when a theme has been exhausted?

33 Variations: A Race with Beethoven Against Time

Director and playwright Moises Kaufman, of The Laramie Project fame, came on stage at the beginning of 33 Variations, his latest show now in previews on Broadway, last Thursday to explain that he had added some last minute changes. Surprisingly so, since, although the play is new to New York, it has come third-hand via Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. The third time around for Kaufman, his direction and scenery haven’t changed, and despite his warning, and a few line flubs, it was a polished and elegant production of an engaging play.

There seems to be little to fool with, as this well-constructed play tells a fascinating set of stories. Musicologist and ALS patient Katherine Brandt (Jane Fonda) determinedly studies Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations to figure out why he would write so many variations on a mediocre waltz. Meanwhile, her daughter Clara (Samantha Mathis) tries to get close to her emotionally distant mother, who has less than a year to live, while Clara is also falling in love with a young nurse in the light romantic comedy subplot of this tightly-woven play.

We also watch Beethoven himself (Zach Grenier) work under an obsessive impulse to finish the variations while going deaf and becoming ill. Katherine, Clara, and Beethoven are all in a race against time, and as Katherine comes to feel, Beethoven’s 33 variations are a way of exploring all the possibilities and complexities existing in one moment in time.

Death is always the end, but in this case it does not denude the play of drama. The crux of the story becomes the conflict between mother and daughter, and Katherine’s need to finish her work. The interludes where Beethoven rages or Clara’s boyfriend tries to romance her are the delight of the play, lightening the sense of pathos that is always present yet which, I suspect, never fully plays out. On one hand we are saved from melodrama, and Kaufman’s language is delightfully restrained and natural. However, despite the competent acting of the players, some of the characters (the music publisher and the German librarian for example) stray into caricature, and Katherine would be more emotionally compelling if she broke down once.

The production of this piece is the well-honed result of its many stagings. The set was wonderfully handled to accommodate the switch between eras, and its versatile sparseness was modern, light, and effective, with sliding panes of music notes surrounded by shelves alternately accommodating 21st century Bonn and 18th century Vienna. A pianist accompanies the play with parts of the variations. Just as characters talk through time, the music and the characters interact as well. In addition to the drama of the piece, I enjoyed learning about Beethoven’s life and works, but also how to listen to him.

33 Variations boasts something for everyone. With its meditation on death, its historical and musical aspects, its touches of light romance, and the gorgeous intermingling of people and ideas across time, the play begs a full house. Combined with the fame of Moises Kaufman and Jane Fonda, it will be interesting to see if that is enough to reel in an audience during these hard economic times.

33 Variations continues at the Eugene O’Neil theater through May 24.

Originally published in Blogcritics Magazine on February 21.