The film, about a talented, articulate and ambitious artist, raises an important question. Why is an artist overlooked? A movie can’t answer definitively, but in 84 fast-paced and colorful minutes Art Bastard delivers a hint of why a rebellious yet loveable personality and his rollicking, politically-charged and mostly humorous paintings are under the New York art world radar. In the words of the movie’s smartest commentator, the oracular Richard Armstrong, Director of the Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, “It’s about chance and geography.”
Read MoreKip’s and Fischer’s respective works underscore a sense discomfort in the act of looking or a reliance on subjective frameworks in the process of recollection. I find their work particularly relevant as they address the relationship between routine and confusion, and between observation and obscured memory, within the context of architecture. From their structures, I gather that to think about edifice is not to reflect on deliberate forms of shelter and safety, but, more so, to consider how the built environment metaphorically serves as a foundation for the lived experience.
Read MoreSome of the most compelling sequences in Wright’s documentary consist of the artist’s reflections on perception, perspective, and space. After a painful breakup with his longtime partner, Peter Schlesinger, Hockney made a series of etchings based on Wallace Steven’s poem, “The Man With the Blue Guitar,” which was in turn based on Pablo Picasso’s famous 1903-04 Blue-period painting, “The Old Guitarist.” Hockney was drawn to the poet’s insistence on “things exactly as they are,” using his etchings to play with realistic and illusionistic depictions of space, all within the emotional frame of the artist’s life and relationships with others.
Read MorePhiladelphia’s Magic Gardens will debut a new program beginning June 5 titled Philly Free Week.The program gives Philadelphians free access to the outdoor labyrinth, the Isaiah and Julia Zagar exhibition “Dear Julia” and daily gallery talks. On the kick-off date, there will be music by Bridgeset Sound and a photo booth.
Read MoreThe tension between rules and improvisation is at the heart of much musical practice, but it is unusual to see it played out in the context of a collective audience performance. As a participant, the experience was thought provoking and occasionally frustrating, and I left with a new appreciation for the importance of rules for all of us who listen to and perform music.
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