Visual Arts
Three weeks ago I attended Friday evening services at the main synagogue of Isfahan. I cannot remember the last time that I went to a kabbalat Shabbat service, but I cannot have gone much more often than once a decade for the past 40 years. By Gary Schwartz Isfahan, gate of synagogue on Felestin Square…
Read MoreA front-page story in the Boston Globe arts section last Sunday reminds us that the Pollock-Matter Affair is alive and well and moving to Boston. One of the biggest art world controversies in decades, this perfect storm of paint, press hype, and cultivated invective swirls around a group of Jackson Pollock-like art works that filmmaker…
Read MoreCleaning up my desk, I came across the following mysterious note, written on a sheet torn out of a small spiral notebook: “Now I see what you mean with the question you had about the stones outside who is different on every sides. I have asked but no one could give some answer. Maybe they…
Read MoreDuring the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Gordon Matta-Clark did what many of us think might be cool, but never dare try to pull off.
Read MoreBoston-area college art museums go where many mainstream exhibition spaces fear to tread. By Margaret Weigel Originally Published February 07, 2006 Boston, MA – Throw a stone in Boston and you’ll hit a college (or an undergraduate); throw it a little further, and you’ll likely hit a college gallery or museum. The Boston metropolitan area…
Read MoreBy Danielle Dreilinger Web artists specializing in alternative comics are finding readers and discovering new ways for the arts to profit online.
Read MoreBy Adrienne LaFrance View Gallery BOSTON, Mass.— We’ve seen it before: Hundreds of multi-colored cows descending on cities and towns across the globe. Since 1999, herds have made their way through Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Athens and towns– some of which have plenty of cows already– across Middle America. This summer, a new collection…
Read MoreBy Adrienne LaFrance BOSTON, Mass.— Feeling too productive? Not procrastinating enough? Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has the answer. Why not stay in your pajamas all day? You could also fantasize about nihilism, be indifferent about everything, or even take a nap on the office toilet. These are just some of the activities depicted in Wurm’s…
Read MoreBy Adrienne LaFrance EVERLY, Mass.— Those with messy desks and piles of clutter take note; things aren’t out of place, they’ve simply found their natural congruency. At least, that’ s what artist Kiki Smith, 52, told a group of about 325 people on Wednesday, March 29 at Boston University’s second-annual Tim Hamill Visiting Artist Lecture,…
Read MoreBy Ken George View Gallery BOSTON, Mass.—John Ashcroft once had statuary at the Justice Department clad in thousands of dollars worth of drapery. An unruly aluminum breast had apparently unnerved the then attorney general, an assiduously religious man. Chalk it up to residual Puritanism, the ascendancy of the religious right, political correctness run amok or…
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