Jazz Icons, a series of 9 DVD box sets, contain a fabulous group of Jazz artists captured on film.Some pieces are from television shows of the 50’s/ 60’s, others are film clips from old Jazz festivals, etc.
I don’t know if Jazz is “In” or “Out” today? perhaps it depends on who is writing about this lasting art form, but, regardless – if you like this music or you’re curious, seeing/hearing these musicians at top form is priceless and fun:
John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Dave Brubeck, and more.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art launches an exhibit focused on the connection between the art and fashion of the mid- 19th Century. Along with paintings, including some on loan from museums around the world including the Musée d’Orsay, there will be photographs and illustrations from the period.
“Highlights of the exhibition include Monet’s Luncheon on the Grass (1865–66) and Women in the Garden (1866), Bazille’s Family Reunion (1867), Bartholomé’s In the Conservatory (circa 1881, paired with the sitter’s dress)…Monet’s Camille (1866) from the Kunsthalle, Bremen, Renoir’s Lise–The Woman with the Umbrella (1867) from the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Manet’s La Parisienne (circa 1875) from the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, which have never before traveled to the United States…”
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.
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.
“Sinister Pop presents an inventive take on the Museum’s rich and diverse holdings of Pop art from the movement’s inception in the early 1960s through its aftershocks a decade later. Although Pop art often calls to mind a celebration of postwar consumer culture, this exhibition focuses on Pop’s darker side, as it distorts and critiques the American dream. Themes of exaggerated consumption, film noir and the depiction of women in art, the dystopic American landscape, and the intersection of popular culture and politics, are explored.”
Some of the artists represented are Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol.
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,
Got the opportunity to have a chat with Photographer Dee Dee Woods about being an artist, the “African American Art Community” in Phoenix, her father Rip Woods and the contribution that art makes to the community:
“Surveying the Spanish master’s oeuvre from 1904 to 1971, Picasso Black and White examines the artist’s lifelong exploration of a black-and-white palette through 118 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. Picasso’s deceptively simple use of isolated black, white, and gray hues belies the extraordinary complexity and power of these expressive works, which purge color in order to highlight their formal structure. “
“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. “
When we are young we believe that we will live forever. We have no idea what that means and the responsibilities that comes along with being alive. How we live does not prepare us for what it is to live a long time
Emmanuelle Riva
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Amour is an exceptional film. It is brave, poignant, honest in that it brings to the surface many of the fears we wish to ignore. It is not a sad movie and at times it’s very funny. The humor is about things that we think about but never say, about our silly concerns that in the end don’t matter. We should all (adults) recognized some part of ourselves in this film.
The film is not fantasy. There is this invitation to the audience, almost from the very beginning of the film to engage in a honest conversation about what we are about to see and what we are about to see is ourselves, in time.
Michael Haneke, Writer and Director
In Europe, actors are allowed to grow old and to become the lead characters in wonderful films about non heroic figures faced with issues that we all relate to. In the U.S., actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone both in their late 60’s portray fantasy figures with guns, muscle and snappy one liners. “America is afraid of getting old”. On the other hand Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva who’s stardom and careers go back to the 1950’s have gotten older like the rest us and their portraits of Anne and Georges are both fragile and heroic.
