03/15/2013
25 West 43rd Street

A talk on “Three Trees: Alberto Giacometti’s Art as Theatre and History,” by Alvin Eng and Laurie Wilson, on Friday, March 15, 2013, from 6PM to 8PM, at 25 West 43rd Street, Room 1000, between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan. This talk is free and open to the general public.

Playwright Alvin Eng and Art Historian Laurie Wilson will discuss Eng’s play, “Three Trees,” a historical drama that explores the unique relationship between 20th century Parisian artist, Alberto Giacometti, and his muse/model, Japanese Existential Philosopher, Isaku Yanaihara. The Pan Asian Repertory Theatre will present the World Premiere of this play at the West End Theare, NYC, March 23 – April 14, 2013.

During the 1950s, Alberto created many portraits of Isaku. For many consecutive summers, Alberto flew Isaku from Tokyo to Paris to continue their sessions. Still, the artist felt he could never fully capture the philosopher’s essence. A deep, complicated love, through art, grew. This love became an obsession that upended everything and everyone in its path. Isaku was forever changed. Alberto’s intimate, insular life with his wife Annette and brother Diego was also never the same.

“Three Trees” is the first of Eng’s Portrait Plays cycle of historical dramas about artists and portraiture. As such, the play also dramatizes the premise of a portrait’s spiritual ownership. When we become enraptured by a portrait, are we under the spell of the artist or model?

Alvin Eng is a native New York playwright, director, performer and educator. Currently, Eng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at Goucher College in Baltimore. Eng was in residence at Hong Kong City University as a Fulbright Specialist scholar in U.S. Studies/Theatre in 2011. Eng has also previously presented at AAARI on, The Flushing Cycle and Other Works (2003), and The Last Emperor of Flushing’s Final Manifesto (2008).

Laurie Wilson is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Psychoanalytic Institute affiliated with NYU Medical Center and practices in New York City. She has published extensively in three fields – art therapy, art history, psychoanalysis and art therapy. Her book Alberto Giacometti: Myth Magic and the Man was published by Yale University Press in 2003. She is currently completing a biography of Louise Nevelson.

To RSVP for this talk, please visit
www.aaari.info/13-03-15Eng.htm.