Visual Arts
Highlights this month in museums around New England include an exhibition of poetic and playful furniture, photographs and videos that radically rethink how a museum should treat art objects, and a show featuring an African artist who specializes in large, shimmering sculptures composed of recycled liquor bottle tops. By Peter Walsh. The van Otterloo Collection,…
Read MoreNo one is safe in the world of Edward Gorey: “From Number Nine, Penwiper Mews, There is really abominable news:/ They’ve discovered a head/ In the box for the bread, / But nobody seems to know whose.” Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey (1925–2000) will be at the Boston Athenaeum (10 1/2 Beacon St.…
Read MoreThe snow is gone, daffodils are coming up in Central Park, and there are terrific shows in all of the major New York museums. The three I saw—at the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie, and the Whitney —all draw on the early part of the twentieth century when artists in Europe and the United States were…
Read MoreIt would have been easy to make an entire season out of the ideas the Boston Chamber Music Society compressed into one afternoon; as it is, the wealth of material had the audience buzzing during the two intermissions. Some found the multi-media presentation too much of a good thing. I found it exhilarating and challenging…
Read MoreThe mad rush to digitization brings up another host of new issues. Unlike a printed book, digital media requires a change of technologies—computers, software, imaging—to interpret the information. Will digitization serve the long-term interests of knowledge as well as the media it is replacing? It’s unlikely. By Peter Walsh. When we look back from, say,…
Read MoreIn practical terms the Virtual Reality helmet has still not lived up to its potential. Another device has come along, however, that can convey as much information, though without the total visual immersion of Virtual Reality. This is nothing other than the humble cell phone . . . By Gary Schwartz. In 1997 I was…
Read MoreWhat An Object of Beauty proves is that while people were fixated on his Hollywood day job, Steve Martin has made himself into a genuine novelist who gives the art world over the last 20 years an exquisitely balanced sort of attention. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin. Grand Central Publishing,295 pages, $26.99. By…
Read MoreMany museums slow up and party like the rest of us this month, but there are a few new exhibitions worth a look, some offering visuals that brim over with good cheer, such as a collection of handmade holiday cards, others displaying a more violent view of humanity, such as “Goya and the Bullfight.” By…
Read MoreThis exhibit is ideal for the budding designer to come and admire dresses with structured tulle, unique hems, bias cut silk, pounds of beads, sequins, and rhinestones, weaved organza and mink accents. Scaasi: American Couturier at the Loring Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA until June 19, 2011. By Megan Trombino It…
Read MoreBut The Image in Question begs a crucial question: Isn’t modern media supposed to be flashy, colorful, and loud beyond all sane toleration? Aren’t shrill, unceasing proclamations a part of what drives some individuals away from television and video-games to art galleries, the concert-hall, and the cinema? THE IMAGE IN QUESTION. WAR — MEDIA —…
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