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By Stephanie Cardon December 30, 2013 Here’s my tug from the archive, with notes. My picks are pieces I found creative in and of themselves, either because of the way they were written, or because of their author’s approach to the topic. BR&S’s August 2013 issue included four exhibition reviews written by poets. This had been the pet idea of our editor John Pyper for a while, and it was wonderful to see it come together in such a playful way. Check out Les Papesses — Palais des Papes, Avignon and Collection…
Ah, the list. The end of the year always means that the reading public is beleaguered with lists, each purporting to tell us the best and worst contribution to culture over the past twelve months. I’m always torn with lists; on one hand, I find them gratifying glimpses into one person’s particular tastes and on the other, I find them annoyingly general and subjective. With this in mind, my “favorites”* from 2013 took a humanist, or personal, perspective, or explored the complexities of the creative personality. Andrea Fraser wept, then answered by…
2013’s end is nigh, and we at BR&S can hardly believe it. We’re full of pride over what we’ve been able to accomplish and cover in our first full calendar year since our relaunch. But, much like in our diverse arts and cultural sector, our blog and journal can sometimes have a blink-and-you-missed-it feeling. Over the next few days, each member of the BR&S staff will be posting their favorite pieces of writing from the year, occasionally offering up insights as to their personal significance. ……………………………………………………………………………………….. Inside Out: An elephant, a bear,…
Every week, BR&S picks out a series of gallery events, screenings, exhibitions, performances. Here are our choices for you to go & see this week: • • • Events • • • Tuesday December 31 The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge New Year’s Fun! Special quadruple feature ticket includes admission to all four films: $20 General Public “Multi Feature”/$15 for Brattle Members “Multi Feat Discount”; Individual films are regular prices. • • • • • • • • • • Tuesday December 31 First Night Boston 2014 1pm — Midnight /…
Sometimes, after leaving a show, I feel a tinge of regret in the pit of my stomach. The regret stems from the feeling that there was only so much I was able to grasp of the work; that there’s more for me there than I was able to pick-up on within the window of time allotted. I am only able to access visual information in accordance with the way I’m thinking about things in my own life at the moment of viewing. I know this seems like a silly qualm to have,…
“Athabasca is an ice field,” the artist Mira Cantor explains. ” Water flows down from the field in both eastern and western directions, eventually ending up in both oceans.”1 In the painting Athabasca (2012) a strong gestural stroke bisects the scene. The vertical white mark and its shadows vanish in a swirl of grays and blues, while the black and gray mountain itself begins to drip into a blue lake. The flow appears to erode the mountain. Its left side is almost completely covered with white froth, and a row of…
Forget objectivity; LaToya Ruby Frazier is an activist at heart. Frazier operates on the inside, and her photography cannot be adequately judged within the category of journalism. Although her photographs invite comparison to the iconic WPA photographs of Dorothea Lange that influenced her as a young artist, Frazier is not interested in documenting events as they happened. Instead, her work manipulates the visual legacy of social documentary as her work begs us to accept her personal narrative as a paradigm for the culture of the Rust Belt. In WITNESS, (on view at…
Welcome to Studio Sessions with this episode’s guest Andrew Zarou. Andrew earned a BA in Studio Art from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1994. His work typically involves collecting images and objects he encounters, then re-configuring and presenting them into systems that create his art. He does this through various methods, such as physically picking up objects off the sidewalk and storing them in jars, collecting pictures of scenes with his phone, and methodically dissecting magazines and other printed material for elaborate collages. Listen as Andrew describes what draws Andrew to…