by Sandy | Jun 25, 2010 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Creativity, dvd, music
“This Is It” is the DVD documentary that captured the final days of the “King of Pop” as he prepared for a concert tour in 2009. I’ll be honest, I began to watch with some hesitation – Is this going to be a sad, tragic documentary about a frail former super star? (I didn’t really want to see that.) But happily, no worries. 
“This Is It” is a joyous celebration of the pop entertainer’s talent and hard work. This compilation of rehearsal footage includes a lot of the songs and dance moves we all know and love and as the show is rehearsed and shaped, we also get to see the attention to detail, the professionalism that was Michael Jackson. He was totally present and engaged. Nothing was too small to go over until it was right. He loved it all.
It becomes obvious why MJ was not “famous” just for wearing gem encrusted gloves – his fans loved him because he so obviously cared about them. He wanted his audience to be entertained. He wanted them to say “Wow” and they did.
Michael Jackson * star ( Don’t believe it has been a year – R.I.P.)
by Sandy | Jun 14, 2010 | Art, Blogroll, Creativity, Museums, Photograhy
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has always supported the idea of Photography as art.
“SFMOMA was one of the first museums in the country to treat photography as an equal to painting and sculpture. In celebration of the museum’s 75 years of engagement with the medium, this exhibition explores the variety and vitality of California‘s photographic tradition from the 1840s to the present.”
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA
(Images: “Contour Graded Hills”, William Garnett 1953 and “San Francisco Strike”, Dorothea Lange 1933)
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by Sandy | May 13, 2010 | Art, Blogroll, Creativity, Photograhy
120 photographs from the Center for Creative Photography’s “Ansel Adams Archive” will be on display at the Phoenix Art Museum until June 6, 2010.
Included in the exhibition are “dozens of archival documents including video footage, original correspondence, photographic equipment, proof prints, alternate views, negatives, and portraits of the photographer – allows for a richer understanding of Adams’s beloved photographs.”
Ansel Adams * Phoenix Art Museum
McDowell Road & Central Avenue
1625 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ
(Image: “Thunderstorm, Ansel Adams, 1948)
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by Bob Martin | Feb 24, 2010 | Art, Art Travel, Creativity
Steve Mumford's "Dying Soldier" 2009 oil on linen.
After witnessing war first hand, an artist’s depiction never resembles Rambo or the animated Xbox games like “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” or any other fictional account of war. It is almost always a portrait of people thinking they are doing the right thing, killing or dying because someone has asked them to. They are never the people who start wars.
The Postmasters Gallery in New York City is currently showing recent paintings by Steve Mumford that depict his experience when visiting Iraq and Afghanistan. Mumford paints the dutiful, the courageous, the bored and the frightened. Unlike a photographer, a painter spends a long time with what must surely haunt them.
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by Bob Martin | Dec 15, 2009 | Actors, Art, Creativity, Live Performance, Movies, Theater, Writers
This quote, attributed to Tennessee Williams is said differently in the 2008 film Transsiberian (“Kill off my demons and My angels might die too”) can be said about all of us. The heroine Jessie, played by Emily Mortimer who’s beauty is hidden by the innocent gangling lumber of her walk and a face that says there should be freckles here and a cow nearby. For all its plainess, the visuals are spectacular, there is a sense of nowhere and dread in this thriller. If you have ever traveled somewhere not knowing the customs or language you will revisit your fears of that time in watching this movies. Good fun.
Cate Blanchette in Streetcar Named Desire
Keeping in touch with Tennessee Williams and quoting him through Blanche DuBois “I don’t want realism. I want magic!” Yes, yes, magic. I try to give that to people. I do misrepresent things. I don’t tell truths. I tell what ought to be truth.” Magic is where the Poetry is. The truth is never as much fun. Cate Blanchett who is starring in Liv Ullmann‘s “Streetcar Named Desire” is a magical actor and perfect fit for what I hear is a transformational point of view for this Tennessee Williams play.
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by Bob Martin | Dec 14, 2009 | Art, Art Travel, Creativity, Exhibits, Museums
The marvelous paintings of Michelangelo Meris Caravaggio are scheduled to 
on exhibit 18 February – 13 June 2010 at the Scuderie del Quirinale marking the 400 years since his death. What is promised in this exhibit of Caravaggio’s work that is different than others I’ve seen, is that there is an assertion that all of the works are those of the great master. The paintings that could be or may be Caravaggio’s have been weeded out.
By drawing on the literary sources and the immense volume of documentary material collected and systematically updated first by Mia Cinotti, from 1971 to 1983, and subsequently by Stefania Macioce, in 2003, and continuously increased up to the present day, it has been possible to conduct a rigorous critical appraisal of the paintings, their precise chronological dating, their provenance and the original and subsequent settings by tracing their various changes of ownership. Scuderie del Quirinale
I never grow tired of seeing Caravaggio’s paintings. They are dramatic, beautifully executed and while many are depictions of biblical scenes, that are also the subject of paintings by other artists of that time, Caravaggio’s works are to me more imaginative and powerful.
So for the art traveler another reason to visit Rome next year.
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