Newest Features
By BIG RED NEWS EDITOR A photographic musing on the nature of driving in Boston, and why it is (perhaps) the hardest city in the world to drive in.
By RACHEL GEPNER The subject of art in academia is something that I feel very strongly about and it is a subject that is unavoidable in Boston. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a school in this town and love them or hate them you can’t be ambivalent. Enter Big RED. We exist to provide a forum for this kind of discussion, and I hope that readers feel they can respond. And…yeah. It’s amazing. I’m trying to think of something useful to say, but mostly I am just filled with wonder…
By CHARLES GIULIANO The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts includes two remarkable paintings by the French Pompier or Academic/ Salon painter, Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904). A student of Paul Delaroche he traveled to Turkey in 1854 and to Egypt in 1857. Inspired by these travels and time in North African, French colonies he added the theme of Orientalism to his work which also included illustrative pot boilers, and crowd pleasers, based on the more gory aspects of Roman history as well as glimpses of the glory days of France.…
By THOMAS MARQUET #2: The second installment of Tom Marquet’s “The White Cube”. “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.
By CHARLES GIULIANO Domingo Barreres: “Scales of Spin” Sue Yang: “Butterfly Series” Howard Yezerski Gallery 14 Newbury Street January 6 to February 7 In the work of Domingo Barreres, stretching back several decades, there is always some reference to his native Spanish heritage. In this latest body of work, produced during a sabbatical from teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, there are vignettes of the “Horrors” and “Capriccios” of Goya, embedded in the paintings as well as references to the tortures of Abu Ghraib, the death of Pope…
By CHRISTIAN HOLLAND Cinema is principally a visual medium; movement and light (i.e. color and shade) are its essential properties. Some of its ancillary aspects are visual composition, in the same way as painting, and synchronized sound, which only came about 30 years after cinema’s birth. Suara Welitoff’s new work in A Million Sunsets, currently at the Allston Skirt Gallery, is silent cinema, reduced to its essential properties. There’s not much information available and there doesn’t need to be, as this Maud Morgan Prize winner of Boston relies only on visceral qualities.…
By MICAH J. MALONE The pin-up girls in Suzannah Sinclair’s drawings are not particularly interested in the viewer. With a gaze that is either inwardly focused or off into space, they seem bored more than they are concerned with being sexy. However, not portraying sexuality is impossible for these beauties who pose provocatively with their panties and lacey things. Sinclair has caught these models in the moment between snap shots- in the pose, but not quite posing. However, appealing to the proverbial “male gaze” these models do not, the drawings are not…
By MATTHEW NASH James Elkins is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and author of numerous books on a wide range of subjects, including “Why Art Cannot Be Taught”, “The Object Stares Back”, “Master Narratives and Their Discontents”, and many more. His ideas about how we think about, teach and discuss art are invaluable for anyone who is involved with education or dialogue in the arts. Below is an email conversation with Mr. Elkins about his work and interests. MN: For those that may not be familiar…