Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 119

TEL I Video Morsels Can Make Up AM Meal on TV LIVE FROM Off Center" is a show that's easy to like, but is it art? The PBS series, which begins its second season at 10 p.m. tonight on WNYC (stereo simulcast on WNYC-FM) and at the same time Sunday on WNET 13, claims to be an "electronic stage for artists," but does this melange of video snippets qualify as art? Well, if something stimulates you to consider whether it's art, the question TV REVIEW Drew Fetherston works are The show much more The networks themselves therefore pears on to satisfy art. Does this work? Indeed Night Live" (Dan Aykroyd) Conceptual Center" is Are for the static shots of conduct. the first padding. Other an artist aire" in empty that most borrowed the effects TV SPOTS ABC is one-hour 87 season others, Burt Ross, Dudley manuel also will Henson the first Awards." jects on with.

Carol Goldberg Perry Como and "American Tribute" Academy-Award Feisty Architect: Controversial And Pleased About It By Leo Seligsohn art, it is fair to conclude that it is. If enters your mind, you confirm that the answer is yes. One may argue about who gets how much credit in "Alive from Off Center's" video a 40-second piece in the first show lists 11 persons in its credits but not about what it is. If you saw any of last season's shows, you know what to expect in this year's series of 10: productions that range in length from a few seconds to the full half-hour of the show. The common thread is video tape; it is the canvas on which all the painted.

also qualifies as art according to a stringent requirement, that of intent. and cable programers govern by what the audience wants, and do not make art. The material that From Off Center" has been made its creators, not the audience, and it is make for some very self-indulgent it does. Remember the "Saturday bit with Leonard Pinth-Garnell as host of a show called "Bad Some of "Alive From Off painfully similar. In tonight's show, the Rules" would be my candidate Pinth-Garnell collection: a bunch of of an actor bellowing a cliched code You get the point (also cliched) in few seconds; the rest of the piece is pieces are interesting because they reveal seduced by his or her medium.

"Lumintonight's show is such: A performance of virtuosity with a computer. The problem is of the techniques used in the piece are from mainstream television; many of will remind viewers of the graphics planning a seriea of specials for the 1986- Tommy Lee that will star, among priest who gets Moore Reynolds, and Em- murder mystery Diana Lewis. The network Dark Streets Go," movie to be aired telecast a new Jim Annette O'Toole Christmas special and "American Comedy Other upcoming pro- Robert Vaughn, ABC include a special in "The Man from Burnett, Whoopi returning to series and Robin Williams, a a regular next Christmas show A-Team," playing Film Institute describes as "a and the perennial ernment official presentations. ture -Team Performance artist Terry Dibble will be featured tonight on 'Alive From Off Center. that open the network evening news broadcasts.

Those techniques have been cheapened by overuse in music videos; "Luminaire" would not be out of place on MTV if the music were changed. In fact, the artists on "Alive from Off Center" often have links to the music video business; the series' theme song is by David Byrne of Talking Heads, and Talking Heads documentarist Jonathan Demme Making has a piece in the seventh show. The best piece in the first show is "Jump," a nice marriage of video effects (by film maker Charles Atlas) and dance (choreography by Philippe Decoufle) that was originally made for French television. Set in a cabaret of the fantastic, it uses video techniques to enhance the sinister flavor of the piece: The legs of dancers suddenly become transparent; dancers seem to leave their own bodies behind as they move. It is too long by the end it seems a parody, all spastic gestures and nervous music but it's fun for a while.

If the chilly technical fare of the first show leaves you cold, try the following week's "Sister Suzie a charming "doo-wopp opera" and hymn to the power of movies written by Lee Breuer, composed by Bob Telson, and performed by the a cappella singing group 14 Karat Soul. It's pretty, it sounds good, it's beautifully performed, the technical work is unflawed, it's thoughtful and evocative without taking itself too seriously. In sum, a serious work that is as pleasing as anything network television can offer. In a word, art. Marvin Kitman is on vacation.

Burt Reynolds to be in special IKE IT OR NOT, the man has boldly reshaped America's skyline and, on the eve of his 80th birthday, he's still cutting up. Johnson: A Self Portrait," WNET at 9 tonight, is an engrossing look at an American original. The second part of PBS' 15-part "American Masters" series, it builds quickly from a routine talking-head show into a sparkling engagement with a quirkily brilliant mind. A peppy, mischievous and entertaining fellow, Johnson is probably his own best invention. Like his steel, glass and concrete structures, he makes instant impact.

Impeccable, assured and egotistical, he fills the hour with bon mots, self-congratulatory rhetoric and dazzling opinions. If architecture hadn't discovered Philip Johnson, central casting probably would have. He'd be playing Clifton Webb parts. The interview is conducted by Rosamond Bernier, writer, art critic, lecturer and longtime friend. In typically whimsical fashion, Johnson sets the program's tone by announcing that his first principal of architecture is: "Get the job." Later, explaining the importance of artists, builders, planners and others, he says, "Architecture is much too important to leave to architects." About himself: "I always like to be on the wrong side of everything.

Sometimes you have to be tangent to the world or you'll go crazy." Recent evidence of the tangential approach is the startling elliptical office building at Third Avenue and 53rd Street in Manhattan. The Johnson purpose, Bernier tells us: sell office space in a building with the idea that every office is a corner office and no one office has more clout than any other." A pioneer in bringing the techniques of the Bauhaus to America, Johnson's Manhattan designs also include the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center and the AT building. It seems that Johnson is never more serious than when he's joking. His "sexy office building" in Houston the Penzoil Building is actually two office buildings, one slightly taller than the other, and built, he says, "within kissing distance of each other." The show frequently cuts away to bring us shots of such buildings from the air, the ground or from inside. We also see a model of one of Johnson's most ambitious projects, a plan to redesign Times Square around a flashy, skeletal re-creation of the present 1 Times Square building, with moving spotlights bouncing their beams off surrounding new buildings and into the sky.

His inspiration: Times Square as the emotional center of New York. Turning 80 on July 8, Johnson is still full of beans. "Life begins at 70," he says, brightly. "Old age is the best period. Seventy to eighty is the greatest.

I've done more work than I did in the preceding forty years and my best work in the past decade," he says. "Everybody hates me because I'm doing so much. I'm now, without doubt, the country's leading architect. It's nice to be so successful, but the thing is, you become the man to Modesty is not Johnson's strong suit. Nor is he averse to the quick putdown.

"I think if I see one more Henry Moore in front of one more Oxford College, I'll. He also announces his disapproval of the way certain art is being displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, which he designed. On the other hand, he approves of the recent redesign of the museum and is quick to give credit where credit is due. His famous glass house in Connecticut, he reminds Bernier, was the late Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's idea. What we never see is Johnson at work, in the process of putting his ideas on paper or overseeing others who do.

But his descriptions of what he does, no doubt, are more eloquent. "Architecture isn't how you look at some monument in the distance like a piece of sculpture," he says. "It's how this piece of sculpture gets around you, how you walk into it, how you get out of it and how it influences you." As for his glass house, he says, simply, "It turns the landscape into wallpaper." Jones will play a involved in a in "Where the a CBS TVnext season. costars. who starred UNCLE," is television as season on what NBC mysterious govin charge of fuoperations.".