Visual Arts

Film Review: The Industrial Cultural Complex and ‘The Art of the Steal’

March 21, 2010
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It’s difficult at first to think of museums and charities as villains, but this documentary does a good job of showing just how much of America’s non-profit art world has been swallowed up by commerce and power brokers. The Art of the Steal. Directed by Don Argott. At the Coolidge Corner Cinema and Kendall Square…

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Visual Arts: The Beauty of Bars of Color within Squares

February 24, 2010
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Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing. —Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” 1967 Bars of Color within Squares, a permanent installation in MIT’s Green Center, Cambridge, MA. Finding Bars of Color within Squares. Photo: George Bouret Reviewed by Yumi Araki Hidden between three buildings surrounding Massachusetts Institute of…

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Coming Attractions at Museums: February 2010

February 5, 2010
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By Peter Walsh Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA through May 9. Locked into a low-status, unprofitable niche, talented Spanish still-life painter Luis Meléndez (1716–1780) made little money and achieved even less fame during his lifetime. He is said to have complained to the king, who never…

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Visual Arts: Rembrandt’s Imagination

January 23, 2010
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I envision Rembrandt with chalk or pen always at hand, sketching from life and imagination constantly. This is also how he taught his pupils, who like him also produced numerous drawings related and unrelated to paintings or prints. Why do so many experts disagree? By Gary Schwartz In an earlier column I illustrated a large…

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Visual Arts: At Rembrandt’s Core, The Drawings

January 16, 2010
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How many drawings by Rembrandt are around? More than many experts admit. The issue is not just a quibble over numbers. It has far-reaching consequences for our reconstruction of Rembrandt’s working method and our understanding of his art. The showdown is coming at a conference on the artist at the J. Paul Getty Museum in…

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Food Muse: WHAT’S FOR DINNER IN THE AFTERLIFE? ORYX ANYONE?

January 6, 2010
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Food was front and center in the here and hereafter. A sumptuous feast was in the offing. But what was for dinner in the afterlife? Chasing the whim of what food went with funerary art, after several blind alleys I landed at Oleana, the Inman Square restaurant invented by Ana Sortun, a Norwegian Seattle native.…

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Visual Arts Review: Color Me Evolutionary

December 11, 2009
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Visual artist Carmen Sasso’s stimulating interpretation of life’s colorful evolutionary ebb and flow exudes plenty of color, detail and movement. Carmen Sasso’s “You’re Welcome,” at the Atlantic Works Gallery until December 28 By Yumi Araki The Atlantic Works Gallery, located in East Boston, MA, offers a magnificent view of Boston harbor. Yet even in competition…

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Visual Arts Feature: O Solomon, where art thou?

December 11, 2009
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By Gary Schwartz To the memory of Dan Tsalka. Among the acts of art vandalism blamed on the nineteenth century, one of the minor ones was actually undone fifteen years ago. It had to do with the dismemberment of a painting by Jan Steen of the wedding night of Sarah and Tobias, a story from…

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Short Fuse: The Revelatory Carnival of Andrei Codrescu

November 24, 2009
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The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu, Princeton University Press, 248 pages, $16.95. Reviewed by Harvey Blume In 1916, as Europe waged an horrific war that, nearly a century later, makes even less sense, if possible, than it did at the time, refugees, renegades, draft dodgers, opportunists, revolutionaries and artists…

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Culture Vulture: Reading Jung’s “Red Book,” Conclusion

November 23, 2009
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Whether you’re a Jungian or a Freudian, think Jung was a genius or charlatan, or even if you’re someone who’s never given much thought to psychotherapy, the exhibition on the “The Red Book” at New York City’s Rubin Museum of Art (which runs through February 15) is worth a visit. THE RED BOOK by C.G.…

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