by Bob Martin | Dec 19, 2013 | Culture, Directors, Film, Movies
Lupita Nyong’o
The film “12 Years a Slave” is a remarkable film and different from previous films that I’ve seen about slavery. The injustices of slavery are evident and yet unknown to its practitioners. It’s a world they live in, because someone said it was OK.
There is no righteousness in “12 Years a Slave”. Steve McQueen is not relentless in his depiction of the cruelty of slavery in America. He is not gratuitous with the use of words, sex or violence. It is an even portrait of the times. We get the picture quickly, cruelty is what human beings have learned and now practice. We do what we can get away with or mimic what has been done to us. It is how we’ve learned, sadly. Unlike Sgt Witt in the “The Thin Red Line” we don’t question ourselves before we act. Why are we doing this?
“This great evil. Where does it come from? How’d it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doin’ this? Who’s killin’ us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin’ us with the sight of what we might’ve known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?” ..Witt, The Thin Red Line
The Hero’s Journey
Solomon Northup’s is metaphorically Pinocchio or more correctly following an abbreviated version of “The Hero’s Journey“. Solomon is naive because he believes that he is free and will be treated like all free men. He is unaware of the evil that lies in the south (The Unknown), because he can’t see it in the north (The Known). McQueen paints a picture of reality. The sky in the south is no less beautiful than the sky in the north. There are no visual manipulation or distinct musical cues. The people in the south believe that they have been given the right to own other people. The people in the north believe they have the right to declare others free. Where do these “rights” come from?
What is gracious about this film is that it avoids the temptation of Revenge. The audience doesn’t cheer at the end. The “evil people” (the people we are not like) don’t get there upcommance.
Edwin Epps, 12 Years a Slave: Sin? There is no sin. Man does how he pleases with his property.
There are automatic triggers that surface when the subject is slavery. People pick sides, assign blame, responsibility, declare ownership, causes, and race becomes the topic debate. Slavery is at times thought of as a unique and horrific American event, that happened in the past and no longer exist. None of which is true, we call it something else now like Human Trafficking, Unlawful Imprisonment or Forced Labor. Slavery may no longer be legal in the world and people still do what they can get away with.
by Sandy | Dec 12, 2013 | Blogroll, Film, Movies
Saying that line anywhere, while on a treadmill in the gym, at a Sunday brunch, after a boring mandatory office meeting or in the middle of a wine tasting, will get you nods/smiles of recognition – “yeh”.
The Godfather films by Francis Ford Coppola based on the books by Mario Puzo lives on. Parts 1, (1972) and 2, (1974), re explode every 6, 12 months on some TV channel. A cable channel just ran a marathon it called, the “Godfather Saga” with re edited parts 1 and 2. It went from 9am to 6pm on a Sunday. If you didn’t have 8 hours to devote to this great American story, you could plug in whenever, meal times, in between telephone calls or text messages and remember dialogue and revisit scenes that have soaked into our bones without even knowing it:
“It was never personal Michael, it was just business”
“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
“I know it was you Fredo, your broke my heart!”
“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”
.
Never gets old, still one of the best films ever. The Godfather is #2 with a bullet on the American Film Institute list of 100 best.
(I like to think of 1 and 2 as a neat package, one experience. I never mention part 3)
by Sandy | Dec 5, 2013 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
The Frick in NYC highlights work from a few Dutch masters until January 19, 2014. “The Frick Collection is the final American venue of a global tour of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Netherlands. While the prestigious Dutch museum undergoes an extensive two-year renovation, it is lending masterpieces that have not traveled in nearly thirty years. At the Frick, a selection of fifteen paintings includes the beloved Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) by Johannes Vermeer and Carel Fabritius’s exquisite Goldfinch (1654).”
Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting
The Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street
New York, NY
by Sandy | Dec 2, 2013 | Artist, Exhibits, Museums, sculptor
Philadelphia Museum of Art highlights the work of this writer and sculptor. “Bringing together more than forty works from the United States and Europe, this exhibition examines Barbara Chase-Riboud’s artistic career, focusing primarily on her important Malcolm X sculptures. Five works from that series—among them the Museum’s Malcolm X #3 of 1969—and five closely related sculptures are included. A group of drawings from the late 1960s and early 1970s made during the development of the Malcolm X series and roughly twenty of the artist’s Monument Drawings from 1996–97 are also on view. “
Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Steles
Philadelphia Museum of Art Until January 20, 2014
Image: “Malcolm X #3”, 1969 Barbara Chase-Riboud (Polished bronze, rayon, and cotton, 9 feet 10 inches × 3 feet 11 1/4 inches × 9 7/8 inches)
FYI – per WikiPedia: “A stele, also stela, is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected for funerals or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased or living — inscribed, carved in relief (bas-relief, sunken-relief, high-relief, and so forth), or painted onto the slab. It can also be used as a territorial marker to delineate land ownership.”
by Sandy | Nov 25, 2013 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
Born in Alaska, moved to British Columbia as a child, Robert Charles Davidson is an artist of Haida Indian heritage. He “has been a pivotal figure in the Northwest Coast Native art renaissance since 1969, when he erected the first totem pole in his ancestral Massett village since the 1880s. For over 40 years he has mastered Haida art traditions by studying the great works of his great-grandfather Charles Edenshaw and others. More recently, Davidson has interjected his own interpretation of the old forms with forays into abstraction, explored in boldly minimalistic easel paintings, graphic works and sculpture, where images are pared to essential lines, elemental shapes and strong colors.
The exhibition will feature 45 paintings, sculptures and prints created since 2005, as well as key images from earlier in his career that show Davidson’s evolution toward an elemental language of form.“
Robert Davidson: Abstract Impulse
Until February 16, 2014
Seattle Art Museum – SAM
1300 First Avenue, Seattle, WA
by Sandy | Nov 14, 2013 | Art, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
The Museum of Modern Art’s American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe showcases inhouse pieces. Included are works by George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, and Andrew Wyeth.
“Drawn from MoMA’s collection, American Modern takes a fresh look at the Museum’s holdings of American art made between 1915 and 1950, and considers the cultural preoccupations of a rapidly changing American society in the first half of the 20th century. Including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures, American Modern brings together some of the Museum’s most celebrated masterworks, contextualizing them across mediums and amid lesser-seen but revelatory works by artists who expressed compelling emotional and visual tendencies of the time.”
American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe
Until January 26, 2014
The Museum of Modern Art / MoMA
11 West 53 Street, New York, NY
(Image: Edward Hopper. “House by the Railroad” 1925)
by Sandy | Nov 7, 2013 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, CDs
The Complete Album Collection, Vol. 1
A 45 CD Box Set of Bob Dylan’s live and studio albums, some re mastered, has been released just in time for the holidays. Heavy – it weighs approximately 20 Lbs.
In addition to the CDs, there will be a book with artwork, photos and all will be available on a limited edition USB drive.
by Sandy | Oct 28, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits, Museums
Living in California for the last few years has brought to my attention certain holidays that frankly I didn’t really notice while living in NYC. One of the most popular is “Dia de los Muertos” (Day of the Dead). Posters, event notices, etc are often adorned with beautifully rendered and stylized skulls or skeletons to acknowledge the sentiments of the occasion. The influence of most of the images came from the work of Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada, (1852 – 1913).
The Museum of Fine Arts offers a presentation that “commemorates the 100th anniversary of the death of José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913), considered the father of Mexican printmaking. Calaveras Mexicanas: The Art and Influence of José Guadalupe Posada showcases a group of approximately 50 of the artist’s prints that explore the continuing resonance of his work.”…” The exhibition also features the work of artists who were inspired by Posada, such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Graciela Iturbide, Luis Jiménez, and Earl Staley.“
Calaveras Mexicanas: The Art and Influence of José Guadalupe Posada
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet St, Houston, TX
by Sandy | Oct 10, 2013 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Museums
The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938… “is the first to focus exclusively on the breakthrough Surrealist years of René Magritte, creator of some of the 20th century’s most extraordinary images. Beginning in 1926, when Magritte first aimed to create paintings that would, in his words, “challenge the real world,” and concluding in 1938—a historically and biographically significant moment just prior to the outbreak of World War II—the exhibition traces central strategies and themes from the most inventive and experimental period in the artist’s prolific career. “
Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
by Sandy | Oct 6, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
I love cats. Grew up with them in my home – they’re so independent and often funny. (Yes, I am one of the millions of people that watch those cat videos online:) The Brooklyn Museum’s latest exhibition may not have them live, but the cats on view are beautiful.
“From domesticated cats to mythic symbols of divinity, felines played an important role in ancient Egyptian imagery for thousands of years. Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt explores the role of cats, lions, and other feline creatures in Egyptian mythology, kingship, and everyday life through nearly thirty different representations of cats from our world-famous Egyptian collection. Likely first domesticated in ancient Egypt, cats were revered for their fertility, associated with royalty and a number of deities, and valued for their ability to protect homes and granaries from vermin.“
Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt
Brooklyn Museum, 5th Flr, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York
