Newest Features
By JAMES NADEAU Blogs are a dime a dozen. They are ubiquitous reminders of the human desire to connect to the world and other people. They are evidence of Habermas’ public sphere, the space where dialogue and conversation between private citizens coalesce into a “public.” Blog unite (or divide) people of like minds. It is with this in mind (uniting or dividing – take your pick) that we have created Our Daily RED. Is there a need for an arts blog, especially one based in Boston? There are other blogs that talk…
By MATTHEW GAMBER It’s Labor Day Weekend. Our Big RED writers and contributors dug deep (emotionally – the weather outside is alluring) and contributed to this, our 68th issue, the Summer’s Growing Old Issue. Galleries follow a close parallel schedule with the school calendar and this part of September is when we redeem our vacation-y August, which usually reputed to have nothing going on in spite of itself. This sentiment is largely untrue, because this issue is packed to the gills. Some new business to note: Keep Your Comments Coming Want to…
By STEVE AISHMAN “The Six Mistakes of Man” The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do. – Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. – 43 B.C.) One of the problems with writing criticism is that…
By KATHLEEN BITETTI Part-timer’s and Adjunct Professors Health Insurance and Retirement Legislation Greetings! Here are two pieces of Massachusetts legislation that will probably be of interest to the artist community. Rather than re-work the information, I am posting the email letter that was forwarded to me. Get as many people you can to support these two pieces of legislation! How to find out who your elected officials are: Vote Smart Where Do I Vote MA From Pat Markunas, MSCA President: Two bills that are important to part-time faculty have been reported out…
By CHARLES GIULIANO While this is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 “Summer of Love,” the fast ending season will also be noted for a media romance with the current exhibition “Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy” at the Williams College Museum of Art where it remains on view through November 11. There has been a tidal wave of coverage with reviews from the New York Times and Newsweek to the New Yorker. Critics have been scrambling to weigh in on the fabulous and wonderfully gossipy…
By THOMAS MARQUET #21: If you have to be at work on a holiday, what is the best way to kill the time? “The White Cube” comics can be read in series in the Big RED & Shiny Collections section. Thomas Marquet is a cartoonist, sculptor, and critic, based in Brooklyn, New York, which is an admittedly unoriginal place to be pursuing any of these things.Get The White Cube every day at Tom’s blog.
By JOHN RUGGIERI I remember the big stink, the uproar, that spilled into the daily newspaper when Serra’s Tilted Arc was deemed unfit, too big, just not practical enough, for human consumption in its commissioned site at the Federal Plaza in New York and was later destroyed. Serra was painted as a diva, as his 120-foot steel sculpture that he specifically made for the site, attracted the ire of a judge and Federal workers for dividing the Plaza in half. Despite Serra’s impassioned pleas and the overwhelming support of artists, museum curators,…
By MICAH J. MALONE Camouflage is a modest exhibition dealing with artist’s use of pattern to construct paintings. The title of the exhibitions takes its name from Andy Warhol’s giant 37-foot canvas. While pattern has certainly been a major theme among post-war painters, the use of pattern obviously dates much further back. Aristotle first coined the term “horror vacui”, or the fear of empty space, and Islamic artists, the Victorian Decorative arts movement and many “outsider” artists later developed the concept as a stylistic approach to making very intricate patterns with symbols,…