WINTER 2007

 

 

LINKS WE LIKE. . .
enlivened and illuminating sites

Wikipedia
illustration by Insu Lee

Wikipedia

"Wikipedia is an online community devoted not to last night’s party or to next season’s iPod but to a higher good. It is also no more immune to human nature than any other utopian project. Pettiness, idiocy, and vulgarity are regular features of the site. Nothing about high-minded collaboration guarantees accuracy, and open editing invites abuse. Senators and congressmen have been caught tampering with their entries; the entire House of Representatives has been banned from Wikipedia several times... Curiously, though, mob rule has not led to chaos... At the same time, the site embodies our newly casual relationship to truth."

"Know It All"
Stacy Schiff, for The New Yorker

"Mondo Wikipedia"
Rachel Aviv, for The Village Voice

 

 

FEATURES
topics that have piqued our interest

John Yang - Over the Door
"Over the Door 02" John Yang

"Over the Door, 1990 - 1993"

A photographic study of the ornamental stonework on New York City's late 19th-century brownstones and tenements with a particular emphasis on the faces, heads and busts adorning the keystones of arches over entrance doorways.

 

3 Ring Circus

Styrogami

Look out! He's got a knife! J. Jules Vitali is one of Artists in Cellophane's most prolific artists. He creates sculpture from recycled styrofoam cups, all with a pocket knife. His work can be found in Art-O-Mat machines.

 

rear view mirror

September 11, 2001

 

 

INTERVIEWS
a chronological listing

 

 

MORE ON ART. . .
articles, provoking and pertinent

Ready Steady Go

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ArtSavant will inform, provoke, & amuse.

We will surprise you.

Come back soon to see how...

 

[ArtSavant logo]
[ArtSavant motto]

 

Events of Mention

 

in the Carolinas. . .

Real life brothers from Charlotte learn to antagonize each other on stage as much as they love and respect each other in real life. Davidson College students Jonathan and Ryan Hubbard play the roles of Lincoln and Booth. Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this depiction of the relationship between two down-and-out brothers, abandoned as teenagers by both parents. Cruelly named, they eke out a living by their respective hustles: Lincoln as a low-rent imitator of Abraham Lincoln, and Booth as a gifted thief and aspiring card sharp. Sibling rivalry is the subtext of the play's ironic dialogue, as Booth tires of their hand-to-mouth existence while futilely insisting that older brother Lincoln return to the game Booth desires, but fails, to master: the three-card monte. Scott Ripley directs.

Topdog Underdog
Davidson College

February 7 - 10

Topdog Underdog

The Guys

Two weeks after 9/11, Joan, an editor, finds a function when she hooks up with Nick, a fire captain who needs help writing eulogies for eight firemen lost at the World Trade Center. The Guys chronicles their initially timid connection, as Joan lends her journalistic tools to Nick's overwhelming grief. We watch her interview him about each of the lost firefighters, and then turn Nick's reminiscences into spot-on eloquent tributes. Along the way, Nick brings to life the mundane details of his men. And Joan muses on how these stories of men she would hardly have noticed under normal circumstances make her realize that "we have no idea what wonders lie hidden in the people around us." Vito Abate directs.

The Guys
Pi Productions

through February 11

The story surrounds Esther, a 35 year old unmarried African-American woman living at the turn of the 20th century. Esther makes her living as a seamstress, creating intimate apparel for women who can afford fine things. There's something about helping someone adjust their new corset that breaks down traditional barriers of propriety, and Esther is exposed to other worlds. She is proud of what she has accomplished - as she puts it, her choice was "either learn to sew or turn back sheets for 50 cents a day" - but she feels that time is passing her by.

Intimate Apparel
Actor's Theatre

February 7 - 24

Intimate Apparel

Mr Marmalade

In Mr. Marmalade, grown-up behavior and misbehavior are refracted through the wide-open eyes of two precocious children. 4 year old Lucy’s imaginary world revolves around a too-busy businessman who never has time for the child who adores him. Her real world, though, seems even crazier until she meets 5 year old Larry, New Jersey’s youngest suicide survivor. James Yost directs.

Mr. Marmalade
BareBones

February 7 - 24

Elizabeth
Emma Fordyce MacRae "Elizabeth" (1929)

This exhibition is a representative sampling of the Jim Craig and Randy Johnson collection, an extensive private collection consisting of American works from the 18th through 20th centuries. Featured artists include Frank Myers Boggs, William Brigham, Romare Bearden, Hallie Champlin-Hyde, William Merritt Chase, and Emma Fordyce MacRae. The 67 works herein present the genius of some of the most successful artists of the last two centuries.

"Personal Preferences: Paintings from the
Jim Craig and Randy Johnson Collection"

Mint Museum

February 10 - June 3

 

elsewhere in the arts. . .

Grey Gardens brings to life the eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, these two women became East Hampton’s most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion. Set in two eras - in 1941 when the estate was in its prime and in 1973 when it was reduced to squalor - the musical tells the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking story of two women, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter "Little" Edie. Michael Greif directs.

Grey Gardens
Walter Kerr Theatre

open ended run

Grey Gardens

Jacques Brel

Through the music of Jacques Brel, this show traces the emotional journey of four archetypal characters searching for connection, working through various obstacles to ultimately gain hope for the future. The songs are about people questioning their own values as well as the rising tide of conservatism around them. Director Gordon Greenberg brings an edge to the show. "We have reordered the songs and played with some of the arrangements to create what will hopefully be an emotionally satisfying through-line and a genuinely European aesthetic that matches the soulfulness of Brel's music. This important piece is a classic and the songs are the stars."

Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
Zipper Theatre - New York City

extended through April 1

Based on Franz Wedekind's play of the same name, Spring Awakening boldly depicts how a dozen young people make their way through the thrilling, complicated, confusing and mysterious time of their sexual awakening. Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's alt-rock musical moves to Broadway after a successful run at Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company. Michael Mayer directs.

Spring Awakening
Eugene O'Neill Theatre

through April 22

Spring Awakening

 

[Singular & Neoteric]

World Record Catfish
"World Record Catfish" (October 11, 2005)

Last fall, an Australian college student named Peter Edmunds started SwarmSketch. As Sarah Boxer described it in The New York Times, "Mr. Edmunds's Web site randomly selects one of the most popular search terms from a couple of major search engines and uses that word or phrase as the topic for a collaborative drawing project for the week. Anyone who wants to can peek at the latest stage of a drawing, add a tiny bit to it (about an inch's worth if you draw a straight line) and even erase other people's lines, or at least vote to lighten them. Best of all, you can watch an animated version showing how the picture has evolved."

SwarmSketch

"A United Nations of Weird-Looking Sketches"
Sarah Boxer, for The New York Times

Art Mobs is focusing on the Museum of Modern Art, producing unofficial audio guides for MoMA, and making them available as podcasts. If a painting could speak, what would it say? Do you like your art criticism served up as more sardonic than saccharine? You'll hear things you'd never hear through MoMA's headphones.

"ArtMobs to Remix MoMA"
Marymount Manhattan College - New York City

Bed
Robert Rauschenberg "Bed" (1955)

Warhol Time Capsule 24

Warhol's Time Capsules, a serial work, spanning a thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, consists of 610 standard sized cardboard boxes, which Warhol, beginning in 1974, filled, sealed and sent to storage. Warhol used these boxes to manage the bewildering quantity of material that routinely passed through his life. Photographs, newspapers and magazines, fan letters, business and personal correspondence, art work, source images for art-work, books, exhibition catalogues, and telephone messages, along with objects and countless examples of ephemera, such as announcements for poetry readings and dinner invitations, were placed on an almost daily basis into a box kept conveniently next to his desk. Capsule 21 can be viewed in the online exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum.

"Time Capsule 21"
The Andy Warhol Museum - Pittsburgh

 

~ voilà tout

[ArtSavant link]
© 2006 ArtSavant - enquiries to info@artsavant.com