Opinion
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More Zombie Formalism
Do the Right Thing
By: - Mar 21st, 2020Artists without faces. Or what do you hang your hat on? Jean Gabin, Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz and John Currin.
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Seventh Seal
Playing Chess with Death
By: - Mar 14th, 2020Recently, on Turner Classic Movies, I saw Ingmar Bergman’s iconic 1957 film Seventh Seal. That was before the death of the actor Max Von Sydow or the widening global pandemic. Yet again there is the contrast of art and artifice. Art is a means of navigating the collape of the American Empire in real time and vivid color. When this passes what will be left of our arts, culture and way of life? How will we pick up the pieces of a new order? Will the elections of 2020 be yet another cancellation? Is this Apocalypse Now?
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Jazz Pianist McCoy Tyner at 81
Played Boston’s Jazz Workshop with Trane
By: - Mar 07th, 2020In 1963 at The Jazz Workshop I heard McCoy Tyner with Trane. It was Trane's only Boston gig. Later Tyner played Lulu White's and we caught him a few back at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. His massive attack was much admired by aspiring pianists. He just checked at 81.
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Donald E. Lacy's Colorstruck
Theater for the New City Mounts Premiere
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Colorstruck and its creators come to us from the San Francisco Bay area where they have been involved in radio, theater and film. They are also participants in community outreach in the arts. Lacy has crafted a one man show which straddles a gap where tears laughter and anger resolve. On an empty stage, Lacy emerges from darkness, a black man in black clothing. He speaks for 75 minutes, lighting up our hearts and minds.
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Drew Hyde Was Seminal ICA Director
Led Institute Back from the Brink
By: - Feb 29th, 2020In 1968 the Institute of Contemporary Art was evicted from Newbury Street. Bag and baggage it was mothballed in its failed former home on Soldier's Field Road. Connected to new Mayor Kevin White and Deputy Mayor, Katky Kane, they gave Andrew C. Hyde a long shot at turning things around. The relaunch largely entailed embracing an emerging generation of artists which formed the Studio Coalition in 1969 and Boston Visual Artists Union in 1970.
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Magic and Stillness
Preparing for a Pandemic
By: - Feb 27th, 2020Between the news and my daily contact with friends in China, the coronavirus is a daily presence in my awareness. I returned from China just shortly before the first cases in Wuhan. My temple is in Hubei Province, and Wuhan is the province's capital city, only about 500 km from the temple. CDC officials tell us it is not a question of if, it is a question of when the virus will spread across the country, notwithstanding the President's assurances last night. My friends all over China have been inside their homes since the first of the month, and will remain there for several weeks to come, it would seem. That may be us someday, too.
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Boston Artist John Powell at 73
Memorial Exhibition at Howard Yezerski Gallery
By: - Feb 13th, 2020John Powell finished but did not see his final exhibition. He died at 73 just days before the opening of Neon Shadows at Howard Yezerski. Artists and former fellows of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT will gather to pay their respects. He will be celebrated for a career in art, science and technology. That was manifested in large public art projects. Using dramatic lighting he transformed quotidian into sublime. A bridge we traverse every day and hardly notice was transformed into an enormous sculpture with light shaping its form.
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Obama’s Picks for Best Films
Everyone’s a Critic
By: - Dec 30th, 2019The conventional wisdom is that everyone is a critic. Which is an insult to those of us who pursue the difficult and complex craft. Why on earth would I give a fig about the year end movie list of former president Obama? I don't dabble in politics or take up brain surgery as a hobby. Having an opinion, and posting on social media, does not make you a critic.
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30 Americans at the Barnes Foundation
Not Incidentally Black Artists
By: - Dec 24th, 2019Representative works from the Rubell Family collection are on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. This is the 10th anniversary presentation of 30 Americans which has travelled the country, but have been seen only once before in the eastern United States. The Barnes presentation is striking. The art even more so.
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Solitude
To Be Alone Is Not Lonely
By: - Dec 06th, 2019Particularly during holiday season, we as social beings, crave the company of friends and familty. Between now and New Year there are many gatherings. It is a time of celebration and excess. This season of ritual tends to play out or wind down into winter hibertaion. My neighbor and friend the North Adams monk, Michael McGrath, discusses the alternative approach of embracing solitude.
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Artist Jane Hudson at Tourists
Birthday Celebration on Becoming Jane
By: - Nov 21st, 2019The upscale Tourists a hip, designer savvy resort in North Adams, has launched a program of evenings with artists. Last night there was a cozy, well attended fireside chat with artist and musician Jane Hudson. She and her husband Jeff operated Hudsons Antiques formerly at MASS MoCA. They also perform music as Jeff and Jane. Both are widely exhibited artists. She discussed phases of her career which I have followed as friend and commentator since the late 1960s. It was also her birthday.
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Berkies 2019
Fourth Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards
By: - Nov 13th, 2019On a night that was colder than a witch's tit the faithful packed the pews of Zion Lutheran Church in Pittefield. We gathered for the fourth annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. Because the heating system failed baby it was cold inside. But an evening in honor of great theatre proved to be a stellar and heart warming occasion.
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Chicago Actor Larry Neumann Jr.
Conversation with Nancy Bishop
By: - Nov 11th, 2019Larry Neumann Jr. is known as one of Chicago’s finest character actors. I have seen him in a wide variety of roles in the 30-plus years I’ve been a Chicago theatergoer and critic. We met at a coffee shop on Irving Park Road near his rehearsal location. It was fun to get reacquainted with Larry and talk about this new role and his career.
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Country Women Concert for Women’s Cancer
Rocked Boston's Hard Rock Cafe
By: - Nov 09th, 2019Taking the stage for a “blow-out” sold-out performance, both Massachusetts-area country singers Annie Brobst and her band and Samantha Rae with Whiskey-6 delivered an over-charged performance from the heart. Full throttle voices reminded the Hard Rock Café audience of the importance of funding research for women’s cancer.
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Boston Jazz Entrepreneur Fred Taylor at 90
What and Quit Show Biz!
By: - Oct 27th, 2019Jazz entrepreneur Fred Taylor has passed at 90. He never retired producing concerts and programming for the Cabot Theatre in Beverly. Not surprisingly his yet to be published autobiography, a collaboration with Richard Vacca, is titled What and Quit Show Business. Taylor booked Boston's Jazz Workshop/ Paul’s Mall from 1963 to 1978. From 1991 to 2017 he booked Scullers Jazz Club and produced the Tanglewood Jazz Festival from 2001 to 2007.
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Ancient Nubia Now
Social Justice Catches Up with the MFA
By: - Oct 25th, 2019During a recent visit to the Museum of Fine Arts a school group was inappropriately treated in a blatantly racist manner. That has caught the museum, and its director Matthew Teitelbaum, in the cross hairs of media whiplash. There is a shameful legacy of racism and anti Semitism at the MFA. It will take decades to make appropriate changes.
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Drawing and Painting By Martin G. Mugar
Lesson Plans for Faculty and Students
By: - Oct 22nd, 2019The artist Martin Mugar has posted a number of provocactive think pieces to this site. His self published book Drawing and Painting provides lesson plans for progressive faculty and students. It distills what he learned earning an MFA degree at Yale followed by decades of teaching. Like all of his writing the book is challengings and insightful.
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Blue Heron Stillness Explained
Home From the Monestary
By: - Oct 09th, 2019Having reuturned from a monestary in China the North Adams based monk and teacher Michael McGrath resumes his writing. He says in part that " For the Daoist, the Longevity Practice is for the purpose of cultivating stillness. In stillness, we become fully aware of the present moment, and that awareness brings clarity."
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Michael McGrath of North Adams in China
Daily Life at Five Immortals Temple
By: - Oct 03rd, 2019The days are long and arduous, the training, in rain or shine, warm or cold, difficult. The toilet is a trench. There are no bathtubs or showers - a face cloth bath with boiled water is as clean as you get. Everything comfortable and familiar in your life disappears, left below at the base of the mountain. Day, date and time dissolve in the mountain mists during the climb, and all you are left with is the moment, one after another.
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Boston Rocker Ric Ocasek at 75
With Ben Orr Founded The Cars
By: - Sep 16th, 2019The counterculture in Boston geared up in the summer of 1968. The music scene, WBCN, and alternative media were well established when The Cars emerged with a self titled album in 1978. They went on to record a string of hits breaking up a decade later. After kicking around with a variety of folk/ rock configurations Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr established a mega group that was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. Orr died in 2000 and Ocasek died yesterday at 75. They were an integral part of a golden age of Boston rock.
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The Irish Troubles
An Overview in the Arts
By: - Jul 19th, 2019A particular period of Irish history has been the focus of several recent remarkable works of art: two books, one an experimental novel, and the other journalistic nonfiction, plus a much-praised Broadway drama. All of them won multiple awards. I’ll also add a 2008 film to this list of artistic works. They all commemorate the years of the Troubles, that period of history of Northern Ireland in which more than 3500 people died or were disappeared.
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Mugar's Theory of Zombie Abstraction
An Update and Controversy
By: - Jun 24th, 2019When I first wrote about Zombie abstraction in December 2013 several months before the concept achieved notoriety in Walter Robinson's now famous essay on Zombie Formalism, I got a blowback in a comment on my Zombie blog from artist Craig Stockwell.
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Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival June 15
Bowe Field, 371 Old Columbia Rd., Adams, MA
By: - Jun 14th, 2019In the shadow of mystical Mt Greylock there will be a gathering of elves and wizzards for the fourth annual Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival. The event, which is fun for kids of all ages, will occur on Saturday, June 15, 2019, 10 am – 10 pm at Bowe Field, 371 Old Columbia Rd., Adams, MA.
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MFA Addresses Recent Incident of Racism
An Open Letter from Director Matthew Teitelbaum
By: - Jun 03rd, 2019A group of 26 middle-school students with chaperones from the Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy visited the MFA on May 16, 2019. They were on a self-guided visit. Before leaving the Museum, the group filed a complaint with Member and Visitor Services that they were met with racism and verbal abuse from visitors and staff during the visit. In an open letter to the MFA Community its director Matthew Teitelbaum details the museum's response and plan of action.
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Experiments at the NY Opera Festival
A.M. Homes Writes Her First LIbretto
By: - Jun 03rd, 2019Experiments in Opera was co-founded in Brooklyn in 2010 by composers Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch and Jason Cady. They contributed Chunky in Heat to the New York Opera Festival. It was a wild, wacky and moving work.
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