Newest Features
By CHARLES GIULIANO It may or may not make a difference to know the collage and assemblage based work of the leading Pop artist, Robert Rauschenberg, prior to experiencing this fast paced revue of sketches written by Charles L. Mee, and directed by Anne Bogart, which opens the season for the American Repertory Theatre of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. As we await the beginning of the play there is a large L shaped drop cloth that covers a wall taking up about a third of the back of stage allowing us…
By KATHLEEN BITETTI Congrats to Big Red on the 50th issue! Turning 50 usually means that one re-examines their goals and/or sets new goals. Here are some of my goals that I hope happen by the time Big Red has its 100th issue: To have all artists (that includes all artists- visual, literary, theater-based, music, etc.) become citizen artists on all levels. To have politicians and civic leaders will want to court the artists vote and include artists on their staff and teams. That artists will once again be appointed to civic…
By MATTHEW GAMBER Like the 49 issues that have come before, we offer the 50th serving of articles, reviews, news and columns. Our first reaction was to congratulate ourselves and offer some kind retrospective, as it is the convention. This kind of pat on the back is mostly unjustified at this point, since it is only a number that happens to cut the number 100 down the middle, a number in which we (collectively) are more impressed. 50 years would be something. Besides, we have a Year in Review issue in the…
By JASON DEAN Editor’s Note: In issue #46 of Big RED, Jason Dean wrote about a lecture by the collaborative eTeam and “International Airport Montello” project. After that piece was published, Dean became a part of the project, and in issue #48 he published the first part of his travelogue, describing the activities leading up to the “International Airport Montello” project. Here, he presents the second part of the travelogue, and his version of the event. September 14th: I woke up in the middle of the night after some last minute work…
By JENNIFER MCMACKON To know what our neighbor knows takes some doing. Reading the same newspapers and fitting our bodies to the same machines gives some comfort, but the isolation persists…. people try to explain to one another what happens inside the spectacle and inside their own bodies. This is more than a distraction. On a good day, the machine’s authority dwindles. Only the impulse to tell the way through a crisis remains. — Mowry Baden in conversation with Stephen Horne For a few days during the installation period for Mowry Baden’s…
By MICAH J. MALONE The Frederic C. Hamilton building at the Denver Art Museum opened with much fanfare only a few weeks ago. Designed by World Trade Center architect Daniel Libeskind, the new building is a tour de force of architectural structure and spectacle. Many are already claiming it the “most important building” in the last 25 years and without question, the impressive contemporary collection of DAM is housed very beautifully in its new home. More than any other time in American history museum expansion is seeing a boom. Portland, Boston, Milwaukee,…
By JANE HUDSON Print this article Eve Sussman has risen to international renown over the past two years since her ’89 Seconds to Alcazar’ premiered at the Whitney Biennial two years ago. The piece, a tableau vivant of Velasquez’ Las Meninas, addresses the interior fictions of the original painting. I have written about this piece before for BRS, “Breaking The Video Frame” in issue #8. At that time I was most concerned with a certain inflation of the medium as it rose into the temple of high art. The piece was fascinating,…
By SCOTT ALBERG The 13 artworks that comprise Matthew Cerletty’s Fallingwater at Boston University’s Sherman Gallery show the artist building on the themes of his earlier realist portraits while engaging in a kind of conceptual figuration. His previous figurative work often depicted friends and family seemingly engulfed by their richly patterned domestic environments, their bodies in ambiguous conflict with their extragent, yet ultimately banal, middle-class surroundings. While a sharp departure in style, the new works lend a greater perspective on his past output. Cerletty’s interest is always with figuration and the body,…