Newest Features
THE DISAPPEARING CRITIC By Daniel Grant We are living in the great age of opinion-writing, of critiques and commentaries, so why are so many of the art critics disappearing from major metropolitan newspapers? (Hint: It’s not just fine arts but book and performing arts critics as well.) Perhaps more importantly, what does this mean for artists looking to advance their careers? For most of the postwar era, and even before that, critics have acted as the conduit between artists and the general public, and artists have relied on reviews to generate discussion of,…
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR By Christian Holland I set out to find a writer to critique the Olympics’ opening ceremony. I had heard they were directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou and out-of-this-world visually stunning. But I couldn’t find anyone, at least not on the entire editorial staff of Big RED (there’s five of us). James Nadeau a frequent Big RED contributor and editor of Our Daily Red said, “Wasn’t it on a Friday night? Who is at home watching TV on a Friday night?” Maybe people only watch for the scantily clad female…
BIG RED ON-THE-TOWN: NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL OF ART &DESIGN AT SUFFOLK UNIVERISTY By Big Red Friday, July 25th 2008 Candid snaps from a Big RED night on-the-town at the opening of ‘Nascent.’ Featuring the work of Cathleen Faubert, Mike Farley, Georgie Friedman, Pete Froslie and Lizzy Martinez. New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University “Nascent” is on view July 25th – August 23rd 2008 at the New England School of Art and Design.
By John Ruggeri Entering the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center world is not your typical high-end museum experience. Formerly a public school and now an affiliate of Museum of Modern Art, it is located in a modest urban neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens, near a bodega or two, and a Quiznos sandwich shop. While geographically not far from Manhattan, the atmosphere feels miles away, lending more a sense of risk to presentation of artwork at P.S.1 than at MoMA. The concrete fortress walls of P.S.1 opened onto a bare, sandy plaza in the…
BIG RED ON-THE-TOWN: THE BERWICK RESEARCH INSTITUTE By Big Red Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 Candid snaps from a Big RED night on-the-town at The Berwick Research Institute for an artist talk by AIR artist Jesse Kaminsky. Berwick Research Institute Images courtesy of Bonnie Bastien and the Berwick Research Institute.
JOHN EWING’S VIRTUAL STREET CORNERS By Rich Tenorio Dudley Square in Roxbury and Coolidge Corner in Brookline are close geographically, but demographically they seem disparate. For about a week in June, artist John Ewing tried to change that. In his “Virtual Street Corners” exhibit, Ewing, a New York State native now living in Mission Hill, sought to link Dudley Square and Coolidge Corner through videoconferencing technology. Passers-by in both neighborhoods could communicate with each other through microphones and video screens. Underlying the project were subtexts of race, income, and ethnic tensions in Boston…
By Amy Handler Amnesia, obsession, malformed or multiple identity, melodramatic unrequited love, silent film accompanied by disembodied (intertitled) voice and rhythmic sound, coexistence of past, present and future from which dream and memory derive, insular family tableaux against changing, absurdist-world and always, comedy in pathos. These are threads that Guy Maddin has dramticized in his films work. His latest offering, My Winnipeg, uses them all. My Winnipeg opens with portrait, not unlike an early Eisenstein film. This kind of claustrophobic framing creates as isolation and entrapment of a passenger bound for nowhere.…
By Big Red & Shiny @ THE MOVIES: INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL by BEN SLOAT & MATTHEW NASH @ THE MOVIES: HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY by BEN SLOAT & MATTHEW NASH @ THE MOVIES: IRON MAN by BEN SLOAT & MATTHEW NASH @ THE MOVIES: THE HAPPENING by CHRISTIAN HOLLAND & MATTHEW NASH @ THE MOVIES: AT THE THEATRE WITH THE AISHMANS by HEIDI & STEVE AISHMAN @ THE MOVIES: WALL-E by CHRISTIAN HOLLAND & MATTHEW NASH @ THE MOVIES: HELLBOY II by JAMES…