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By Harvey Blume The beauty and power of Chauvet’s art, at once primal and sophisticated, tempers director Verner Herzog’s passion for Homo Sapiens bashing. We do, after all, belong to the very same species as those cave painters. Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Directed by Werner Herzog. At various New England cinemas. It was with some…
Ambitious, by turns captivating and exasperating, this sprawling book is like an enormous photomontage—that popular German art form of the 1920s—made up of textual mosaics from newspaper articles, diary entries, letters, novels, or, on occasion, FBI files.
Updated Local artist, curator and arts educator Susan Erony, whose text piece on silk “To Gloucester with Love” is a setting of a Charles Olson poem, gave a model of an arts center talk on the evolution of text as visual art.
Before we hit the ground, I reversed my attitude and became a fan of the restoration of the Dutch royal palace on Dam Square, Amsterdam. I could not fault the decisions that had been taken.
I feel like such a nag, but someone ought to be able to point out a 300 lb gorilla in the room when it knuckle walks, glowers and pounds the walls. I will be that very nag and shortly name the ape accordingly. Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall—from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the…
It is really very much of its time and place, its particular moment in history. The social revolution of the 20s, the new freedoms for “modern” women, the flapper phenomenon, and the challenges to the class structure in urban 20th century America are among the issues in this 1927 silent comedy. By Bill Marx The…
Russian Winter is part mystery and part love story, drawing on the (overly) familiar tropes of each: the missing jewels, the deceived lovers, and so on. The material is not original, but it is workable and proffers plenty of Hollywood glamor. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay. Harper Perennial, 496 pages, $14.99. By Nora Delany It…
While there are some holes in “Hanna”, director Joe Wright doesn’t let them interrupt the overall enjoyable experience of the film. Known for period movies where he dotes on scenic landscapes, he takes this opportunity to prove himself a thoroughly modern director here. Hanna. Directed by Joe Wright. The cast includes Cate Blanchett, Saoirse Ronan,…
For a film in which politics are of such moment, “Miral” longs to be apolitical — or just sublimely fuzzy. Schnabel wanted to make something warmhearted, beautiful, and decent, something that would give you a hint of how history — roughly from Partition to the Oslo accords — looked from the Palestinian side, and he has
succeeded …
Arts Commentary: What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Cultural Dialogue
An exchange about what meaningful online conversation about the arts and humanities entails. What kind of cultural dialogue would best serve the purpose of the Mass Cultural Council? To focus on the creativity of artists? Or to encourage critical thinking?
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