by Bob Martin | Mar 17, 2013 | Art, Drawing, Exhibits
Prints from the “War” and “Death” Portfolios
Käthe Kollwitz Self Portrait
When in New York, especially in the spring, the Brooklyn Museum is (in my opinion) a great museum to visit. I love this museum because it usually stays away from doing the spectacular event (no fireworks) and lets the art speak for itself.
Starting March 15th thru November 10th, prints of the Expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz from the Museum’s private collection will be on exhibit.
Kollwitz’s etchings and drawings are powerful, honest and beautiful in there simplicity.
by Sandy | Mar 15, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston presents 30 pieces from international artist Lois Mailou Jones, 1905-1998. Born in Boston, her work was influential to other black artists during the Harlem Renaissance and her art is reflective of her travels to France, Haiti and Africa.
Lois Mailou Jones Until October 14, 2013
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts
(Image: “La Baker”, 1977 acrylic and collage on canvas)
by Bob Martin | Mar 5, 2013 | Art, Exhibits, music
Beauford Delaney (1901–1979), Portrait of a Young Musician, Studio Museum in Harlem,
An exploration in what was called “Avant-garde” , sometimes dismissed because of unfamiliarity and being seen as ahead of it’s time, because it was. Starting over, musically and visually. Realism was found to be not real.
“The exhibition’s title is drawn from a 1960 solo album by virtuoso jazz pianist Jaki Byard in which improvisation on blues form becomes a basis for avant-garde exploration. The title suggests that the expanded poetics of the blues is pervasive—but also diffuse and difficult to pin down. By presenting an uncommon heterogeneity of subject matter, art historical contexts, formal and conceptual inclinations, genres and disciplines, Blues for Smoke holds artists and art worlds together that are often kept apart, within and across lines of race, generation, and canon.” Blues for Smoke,
[youtube http://youtu.be/mhBFk54qBNk]
The Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art exhibit “Blues for Smoke” accompanied by a series of musical performances will be on view until April 28th.
by Sandy | Jan 17, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
“Variations on Theme: Contemporary Art 1950s–Present”, a current exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art, “brings together works in all media from disparate periods to explore themes and ideas that drive an artist’s creative process. Sections will be devoted to thematic associations including abstraction, minimalism, and the figure… Works from the collection that have never before been seen will be installed alongside a number of recent acquisitions to focus a new lens on ways of discovering the collection. “
“Variations on Theme: Contemporary Art 1950s–Present”
Until January 27, 2013 – Dallas Museum of Art / DMA
1717 North Harwood, Dallas, Texas
Image: Shozo Shimamoto, Untitled–Whirlpool, 1965, oil on canvas
by Sandy | Jan 7, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits, sculptures
The Schomburg celebrates Ms Catlett, painter, sculptor, printmaker, activist (1915 – 2012), with music and poetry on Saturday January 12, 2013 at 6 PM.
“Inspired by the Civil Rights era, the late Elizabeth Catlett became one of the world’s most treasured artists of the 20th century- defining the courage, hope and beauty of African-American life in America. Join notable scholars, poets and artists remembering her life and contributions!”
“Art must be realistic for me, whether sculpture or printmaking, I have always wanted my art to service my people—to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential…. I try to tell young artists, black artists, that there’s a great need for their work. Some are only interested in doing what they want to do, not what people need.—Elizabeth Catlett”
For My People: A Musical & Poetic Tribute to Elizabeth Catlett
Saturday, January 12, 2013 * 6PM – 9PM
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY
(Sculpture: “Mother & Child”, 1939 – recurring theme throughout career)
by Bob Martin | Dec 27, 2012 | Actors, Art, Concerts, Directors, dvd, Exhibits, Film, Movies, music, Writing and Speaking
Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx
Quentin Tarantino, the over hyper creative genius, and his new film Django Unchained flirts with mastery. The film is maybe 15 min too long but its close enough(more about the 15 min later). If you’ve seen a ton of movies in your life, you will find a reference to just about every one of them in Django Unchained, that’s what Tarantino does, except in this one “The Guys with the White Hats” loses out. Directors like Sergio Leone, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, Tim Burton and many more have contributed unknowingly to this creative effort and again this is no knock on Tarantino’s creative talents, it is his creative talent in using themes we are all familiar with and in some cases turning them upside down that makes us laugh and maybe even think.
The film makes no pretense that the story of Django is based on anything remotely true and yet still is able to paint an ugly picture about this country’s past. The movie is often hilarious, heart breaking (for some of us) and outrageous. Tarantino has created an African America Super Hero who rides a horse that mimics Trigger and thus slaps down the fable of “Guys with White Hats” being the good guys. There is room here for a sequel(s), the son of Django Part 2.
The movie is gory, so if you find vampires, Bruce Willis, Jason Bourne or Bambi disturbing you should avoid Django and not see it. The dialogue at times is that of two 9 year old inner city kids acting out scenes from a movie, with a child’s emphasis on vulgarity. As promised, the wasted 15 min: Cutting the number of times the N-word is used in half to about 70 would make the film shorter giving Tarantino his masterpiece. Spoiler alert, no other movie that I’ve ever seen has approached the subject of Black Slavers (Blacks who enslaved other Blacks) and while its not gone into in great depth it has not been swept under the rug either and I am not sure how open Black America is to this fact. In addition Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) is an important and complex character in the film, similar to, but a more repulsive, Colonel Nicholson (Bridge on the River Kwai) who are both blinded to their own culpability.
Django Unchained is enormously entertaining and not a source for cultural or political debate and yet people will feel a need to see it as some referendum about current, past or future events. What can be debated is that Tarantino got to do a film that no African American director would be allowed to do, and that should be debated (and not with me). Django is a movie, just like Les Miserables, Jack Reacher, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are all just movies. Django just happens to be really good.
- Django Unchained: A love Story (visionarywateringhole.wordpress.com)
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- Django Unchained is a heroic love story
- http://sonofbaldwin.tumblr.com/post/37790755920/to-be-unchained
