by Sandy | Jul 21, 2013 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston presents, not the Tom Cruise movie, but, “Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection” featuring the extraordinary artistry of the armor used by samurai—the military elite led by the shoguns, or warlords, of Japan from the 12th through 19th centuries.” “…more than 140 objects from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller collection, including armored horses carrying combat-ready samurai in full regalia. Highlights include helmets of lacquered metal adorned with emblems often inspired by nature—which signaled the status of the wearer, differentiated samurai from each other, and also frightened the enemy on the battlefield—and full suits of exquisitely crafted armor, weapons, horse armor, and accoutrements used for both battle and ceremonies.”
Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection
Until August 4, 2013 – Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Avenue of the Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA
by Sandy | Jul 18, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Museums
European artists escaping the turmoil of World War II came to New York during the ‘40s to work and exhibit. A lot of their paintings were collected by the Guggenheim Museum in NYC:
“Kandinsky: 1911-1913” until April 2013
The acquisition of Kandinsky’s paintings and water colors started in 1929. “This intimate collection exhibition highlights paintings completed at the moment the artist transitioned toward complete abstraction and published his aesthetic treatise, On the Spiritual in Art (1911).
“Thannhauser Collection” ongoing
The vast art collection of Justin Thannhauser, son of an art dealer, includes works by such artists as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
89th Street and 5th Avenue, NYC
(Image: Vasily Kandinsky, “Composition VII”, 1913)
by Cybel Martin | Jul 14, 2013 | Blogroll, CDs, Culture, music
I love to listen to Brazilian music when I paint: Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Stan Getz etc. I just read this absolutely fascinating article in the NY Times about the origins of Brazilian music: how it was influenced by Arabic culture & how its aesthetic was passed onto American Blues. I have to get my hands on the recently released “Musica Tradicional do Norte e Nordeste 1938”. (It’s a 6 CD box set of Brazilian music circa 1938.)
by Sandy | Jul 9, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
“The Met’s current Costume Institute exhibition, PUNK: Chaos to Couture, examines punk’s impact on high fashion from the movement’s birth in the early 1970s through its continuing influence today. Featuring approximately one hundred designs for men and women, the exhibition includes original punk garments and recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear borrow punk’s visual symbols.”
PUNK: Chaos to Couture
Until August 14, 2013
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
5th Ave and 86 Street, NYC
by Sandy | Jul 4, 2013 | Blogroll, Books, Culture, Exhibits, Learning
Its that time of year again. This annual event involves over 200 exhibit booths, music, panel discussions and children’s activities. It’s a great way to spend a Friday night / Saturday in the city.
“The vision of the Harlem Book Fair is to partner with local
and national leadership organizations under the banner of literacy
awareness, affirming HBF as the nation’s largest African American
literary event celebrating family literacy, community empowerment,
and community cooperation. “
2013 Harlem Book Fair
Friday July 19 / Saturday July 20, 2013
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
West 135th Street between Malcolm X Blvd and Fredrick Douglas Blvd
by Bob Martin | Jun 12, 2013 | Actors, Movies
Mickey Sumner and Greta Gerwig
After two seasons of “Girls” any movie that is about a maladroit young woman has my brain going “copycat” especially when Adam Driver shows up in one of the earliest scenes and I then spend the next 15 minutes looking for Lena Dunham It is times like these when I need to ask my brain to take a time out. I am afraid I missed a lot of this movie playing “One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn’t belong, (Sesame Street)” in my mind.
Frances Ha was worthy of more of my attention and I’m looking forward to seeing it again so that I can enjoy it completely. Frances Ha is not Girls.
Little movies like Frances Ha offer their audience a banquet of opportunities to learn something new, or to be reintroduced to something we’ve forgotten. They are seldom copycats or sequels. Nothing gets blown up and the end of the world is not around the corner. (See “The Women are Gone”) Little movies are usually about something you recognize in yourself. They come close to being real.
by Bob Martin | Jun 11, 2013 | Art, Directors, Film, Movies
Just watched (again) The Thin Red Line and the question asked is “Who is Killing Us” I get caught in that question. Are the crimes we inflict each other for some reason and/or for someone. It’s seems insane to think that we do this daily for no reason at all. So what is it about and who is it for? Or are we just simply insane. I wonder why we are so afraid of one another, that there is no middle ground, someone has to lose. Even the winner loses.
Why can’t we, collectively, say we are done.
Terrence Malick..voice over narrative is like someone whispering in our ears while we sleep. But it not a nightmare, it is what we’ve done.
“We were a family. How’d it break up and come apart, so that now we’re turned against each other?”
It use to be that it took many generations for history to align itself with the truth so that the regrets and apologize can acknowledged . The truth is showing up a lot quicker now and I wonder if we will think war is still worth it.
by Sandy | Jun 6, 2013 | Art, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits, Museums
This is just one of the many beautiful Benin bronze figures included in the Metropolitan Museum’s “Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas” exhibits.
“Oba” was the term used for King in Benin, West Africa (now part of Nigeria). I am so grateful that some of this former kingdom’s art has been preserved.
Art can be such a history lesson sometimes. So often it represents what is most important to a people during specific periods of their time.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
5th Ave and 86 Street, NYC
www.metmuseum.org
*Head of an Oba, 16th century (ca. 1550) Nigeria; Edo, Court of Benin (Brass)
by Sandy | May 9, 2013 | Art, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Culture, Exhibits
The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey
“Five centuries of African American history, culture and heritage… the exhibition celebrates Bernard and Shirley Kinsey’s passion for collecting objects of extraordinary significance over the 40 years of their marriage.
One of the largest private collections of African American artifacts, documents and artwork, the Kinsey collection of rare books and manuscripts, paintings, prints, sculpture, and photographs includes an early version of the Emancipation Proclamation, correspondence between Malcolm X and Alex Haley, slave shackles, a 1773 first-edition copy of poems by Phillis Wheatley”, and more.
The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey
Until May 19, 2013
MoAD – The Museum of the African Diaspora
685 Mission Street San Francisco, CA
by Bob Martin | May 1, 2013 | Art
Walter Ellison. Train Station, 1935. Charles M. Kurtz Charitable Trust and Barbara Neff Smith and Solomon Byron Smith funds; through prior gifts of Florence Jane Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison, and the estate of Celia Schmidt.
Some of the most informative art work created in the United States is that of the first and second great migration. The not so subtle change in the demographic in the country brought about a dramatic shift in the culture. Music, Dance and Poetry made it’s way north along Mississippi transforming everything along the way. At the same time immigrants from all of the globe began to fuse their stories in what is sometimes called the great melting pot.
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston presents, not the Tom Cruise movie, but, “Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection” featuring the extraordinary artistry of the armor used by samurai—the military elite led by the shoguns, or warlords, of Japan from the 12th through 19th centuries.” “…more than 140 objects from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller collection, including armored horses carrying combat-ready samurai in full regalia. Highlights include helmets of lacquered metal adorned with emblems often inspired by nature—which signaled the status of the wearer, differentiated samurai from each other, and also frightened the enemy on the battlefield—and full suits of exquisitely crafted armor, weapons, horse armor, and accoutrements used for both battle and ceremonies.”
