Loving Schubert, in Any Form

Three Pianos, currently playing at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, is another successful production in line with the theatrical proclivities of artistic director Diane Paulus—theatrical mastery, audience engagement, crisp production values, meaningful content (and context,) and the delivery of an evening out that is both fun and informatively rich. Paulus has demonstrated a deft […]

I Feel You

Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Linear Minnie Pwerle, Bush Melon Seed It is in the nature of an artist to look for commonalities between contemporary concepts of form and those of ancient or indigenous cultures. Brahms and Schubert wandered the countryside listening to and absorbing native, folk and gypsy musical idioms, incorporating many of those traditions into […]

Northern Exposure: SFMOMA

Francesca Woodman, Polka Dots, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976; gelatin silver print; courtesy George and Betty Woodman; © George and Betty Woodman A few highlights from a day spent at the San Francisco Museum of Art, a visit that followed the feast that was Pacific Standard Time in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving… Francesca Woodman‘s life was […]

Pacific Standard Time: California Dreamin’ (On a Winter’s Day)

Julius Shulman’s iconic archictectural photographs capture California’s new sense of architecture, space and lifestyle. ______ Returning to my coverage of the Pacific Standard Time art exhibit/extravaganza in Los Angeles: LACMA’s sprawling multi-building expanse is a stop I make every time I am in LA. Their flagship PST show, California Design, 1930–1965: “Living in a Modern […]

Lanierisms

I have more to report on Pacific Standard Time but a channel change seems like a good idea right about now. So here are a few highlights from The Visionary, a portrait of Jaron Lanier by Jennifer Kahn in the New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2011. (I am particularly fond of Lanier and have […]

Pacific Standard Time: Proof at the Norton Simon Museum

June Wayne, founder, at Tamarind in the 1960s, photograph by Helen Miljakovich, courtesy June Wayne More on the exhilarating Pacific Standard Time art extravaganza in Los Angeles: The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena has assembled its PST exhibit around the intriguing story of printmaking in Los Angeles—Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California. At […]

Pacific Standard Time Sidebar: Theaster Gates at the Geffen

Civil Tapestries, by Theaster Gates, 2011. Decomissioned fire hoses and wood. Concomitant with Under the Big Black Sun at Geffen Contemporary (which I wrote about here) is an exhibit by Theaster Gates called An Epitaph for Civil Rights. Tethering this installation to events during the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s campaign in Birmingham in 1963 where […]

Pacific Standard Time: A Time Out of Joint, at the Geffen

More on the exhilarating Pacific Standard Time show (extravaganza?) in Los Angeles: Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA, has its main location downtown near Disney Hall (and, until they were expelled last weekend, OccupyLA.) The MOCA’s “we could play football in here”-sized spillover exhibit space, the Geffen Contemporary, is in Little Tokyo. A former […]