Newest Features
By BIG RED NEWS EDITOR The Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Massachusetts, has announced the launch of a new program. The Artists Professional Toolbox (APT) is designed to empower emerging and practicing artists to succeed in the business aspects of being a professional artist. Download the informational brochure and application form with more information; or find more information on their website by clicking on the Toolbox link. In short, the program is divided into three portions: career planning, marketing, and financial/legal issues. The VLA developed the curriculum in response to surveys of…
By CHARLES GIULIANO Moments after leaving the Thomas Hirschhorn exhibition “Utopia, Utopia=One World, One War, One Army, One Dress,” which will be on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston through January 16, 2006, I encountered a woman passing on Boylston Street on the way to afternoon class at the New England School of Art & Design. Normally she would have provoked at best a fleeting glance. But what proved to be riveting and memorable, indeed immortalized as the lead for this essay about a provocative Swiss artist born in 1957…
By CHARLES GIULIANO Over the years, some of my Beer and Burger meetings with artist Martin Mugar have been epic. Early on, when we first met, there was a hilarious gonzo evening, with copious vino, at the elegant Algonquin Club, a bastion of the old Boston. We closed the dining room as the last guests and were still lingering over coffee when the maitre d’ deftly lured us to the lounge with complimentary snifters of brandy. After which I suggested a nightcap at the Pour House a lively pub on Boylston Street.…
By RACHEL GEPNER Last week a writer sent me a copy of Samson Projects’ press release from the show Off My Biscuit, Destroy the District and a note saying, “I’ve never seen it’s kind before but THIS IS ART WRITING.” Okay, so he didn’t use all caps…or any, really, but the question is clear and taking an editorial stance suddenly seems important. What is art writing? Artists explain themselves, critics explain artists, artist/critics explain themselves through the work of other artists, and everyone justifies their existence to a world that cares very…
By THOMAS DORAN This Thayer street show is just what we’ve had coming to us: Incendiary broadcast with a week left to go. Below is the Samson Projects press release in its entirety: —- “Yo Camilo, what up with this Dave Hunt show, Off My Biscuit, Destroy Your District? “If you ask me, I could do without the wigger posturing. I know it gets greater later, but this kid better have his chips stacked if he’s claiming the next level Sith Lord type shit. I mean, c’mon, Ghost Face lyrics? He’s bugging.…
By MATTHEW NASH Much has been written about “Things I Love: The Many Collections of William I. Koch” currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts. Many of these articles address the blatant pandering of the MFA to the whims of a prominent collector, including the last issue of Big RED, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, and many more. It seems, however, that very little has been written about he exhibition itself, and while much insight has been offered about whether or not this exhibition should have been shown, not…
By JONATHAN FARDY In the mid sixties the body came back into art. The human figure had all but disappeared due to the overwhelming dominance of American abstraction, but come back it did – out from under the repressive gaze of formalism. While for some artists the body became a site on which they could resurrect the drawing and rendering banished by late Modernism, for others it offered a place to explore issues like gender, race, sexuality – a new frontier or, to appropriate Barbara Kruger’s terminology, a new “battleground.” Just…
Big Red & Shiny: AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM STOVER By REESE INMAN Cerith Wyn Evans’ first solo US museum survey was presented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from Oct 6, 2004 – Jan 30, 2005. The exhibition included an installation of seven crystal chandeliers, each intermittently flashing Morse code translations of various texts, with both the texts and their Morse code translations displayed on computer screens set into the gallery walls. Below, William Stover, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, discusses his interest in Wyn Evans’ work, the decision process surrounding…