Word
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Future Shock
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
By: - May 18th, 2016Vivid memories as a child during the war years of the 1940s. Yet what happened yesterday or even an hour ago at best a blur. So much of life, time and memory under my belt. Both sharply etched and well defined as well as utter chaos. Looking back and trying to make sense of a life lived with an eye to tomorrow.
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Dissent
Unearthing Ruins
By: - May 17th, 2016From the bonfire of dead art rises the hope of new ideas. One must destroy, refuse to obey, not follow in the footsteps in order to find a true self. In art that's all the matters for which it is specious to expect praise or understanding. Tear down temples and museums in order to rebuild them. The only relevance is art of our time and what comes next.
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Transportation
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Encyclopedia vs. Wikipedia
Knowledge as Trash Talk
By: - May 13th, 2016During the Age of Enlightenment the French philosophes, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, attempted to commission, edit and compile a number of essays gathered into the first Encyclopedia. Our set of the Encylopedia Britannica was a daunting marvel of my youth. It was there to consult as I plodded through school assignments. Now it's all on line. Once a treasure my precious encylopedia is reduced to trash. It's broad shelf space is replaced by a computer and cell phone.
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Topsy Turvy
What Goes Up Must Come Down
By: - May 12th, 2016Watching the nest egg boom and crash is a sure ticket to terminal agita. Best to walk the beach and fuggeddhaboutit.
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Common Irish Values
Them's the Breaks
By: - May 12th, 2016In show biz they say Break a Leg. But for our Annisquam poet it was an arm. We welcome her back after a winter of discontent.
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Reasonable
Sisyphus at the Super Market
By: - May 12th, 2016Starting a transaction tne cashier, waiter, telemarketer asks "How are you?" It is not an invitation to discuss day to day challenges and miseries. We utter good or fine with no sincerity. It is meant to be reassuring. I'm ok and you're ok. Not I'm in debt up the wazoo or recovering from surgery. Often my response is "reasonable." It conveys coping as best I can under the circumstances. Now and then it initiates an actual human interaction.
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Yo Muthah
You Be Cool Man
By: - May 08th, 2016Yo man happy muthah's day. Layin' back in the hood.
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Curioser and Curioser
Chumping America
By: - May 07th, 2016Scorched earth campaign The Donald has divided and conquered leaving his party and presumptive nation in tatters. What stands between him an making American great again is Hillary, who nobody seems to like, and another stint of a Clinton White House. Just when it couldn't get worse it is by a long shot.
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Jamin' the Jive
Mingus Cutting Brubeck
By: - Apr 25th, 2016With great artists gathered for Festivals entrepreneur George Wein liked to match them up for impromptu jam sessions. They didn't always work like when Charles Mingus on bass joined pianist Dave Brubeck for a hilarious cutting contest. Brubeck would lay down a lick which Mingus then took apart and reassembled like a bop crossword puzzle.
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Guggenheim Installs Golden Potty
All That Glitters Is Not Art
By: - Apr 22nd, 2016In the current art world nothing succeeds like excess. The venerable Guggenheim Museum has installed a golden potty an alleged work of art by Maurizio Cattelan. In the Dada tradition of Duchamp it appeals to New Yorkers sitting on the throne who believe their shit is gold.
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Royals in the News
Prince Dead All Hail the Queen
By: - Apr 21st, 2016A bitter sweet day of Royals in the news. Champagne toasts for the Queen now 90. Posed with her brood. While the artist known as Prince pronounced dead at 57.
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Alpine Hotel
View of Central Park
By: - Apr 21st, 2016Come Labor Day, back from Boston, gallery gig started. In transition stayed in hot sheet Alpine Hotel at Columbus Circle. From its eventual penthouse awoke to view of Central Park.
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Stonehenge
Great Circle of Stones
By: - Apr 21st, 2016The great circle of stones vividly evoke pre-Christian Britain when Druids worshiped the gods in harmony with earth and the passage of time.
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Royal Flush
Grouse Hunting at Balmoral
By: - Apr 21st, 2016I was just eight when that other Charles was born. From then on he seemed like a younger brother. Over the years in the darkest hours we have roamed the highlands during holidays at Balmoral Castle. Now seniors we wonder when or if he will be King.
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Brandenburger Tor
When the Circus Came to Town
By: - Apr 20th, 2016Visiting Berlin some years ago we stayed at the apartment of Horst and Bettina Hiemer the actor cousin of Astrid. From the balcony of their apartment we looked down at Cirque de Soleil a short distance from the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of the city.
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Watson and the Shark
Conflating Havana and Boston Harbor
By: - Apr 20th, 2016During a celebration of Tall Ships ancient square riggers anchored in Boston Harbor. It inspired conflating the setting the dramatic Copley masterpiece Watson and the Shark. The event occurred in Havana but it has been reenacted in Boston. Copley created three versions of the amputation which has now been upgraded.
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Amalfi Coast
To Catch a Thief
By: - Apr 18th, 2016The cliff line drive, high above the Mediterranean, from Sorrento to Amalfi is spectacular but terrifying. It was the setting for the enduring Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief (1955) which paired Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. She later quit Hollywood to marry Prince Rainier and share the rule of the tiny Monaco. The Princess was 52 when she died on September 14, 1982, a day after suffering a stroke while driving, causing her to crash. Her daughter Stephanie survived the accident.
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Artist Rafael Mahdavi
School of Paris
By: - Apr 17th, 2016With family in Wellesley the artist Rafael Mahdavi commuted to a studio in the Marais arrondissement of Paris. He is fluent in several languages including Farsi and has had numerous exhibitions in Europe and America. In 2000 we met in his Paris studio to plan a tandem of exhibitions for New England School of Art & Design/ Suffolk University as well as Boston's French Library. With a shoestring budget we shipped large paintings to and from Paris rolled in a tube sent by Fed Ex as table cloths. This was a means of avoiding prohibitive French taxes. Sight Unseen proved to be an ambitious and insightful international exhibition.
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Al the Arab
Hipster Wizard
By: - Apr 15th, 2016We knew the consummate hipster Albert Hamway by the colorful sobriquet Al the Arab. But may, in fact, have been Armenian or Lebanese. Mentor and friend he was a running mate while on the lam in the Lower East Side.
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Sonny Rollins
Tenor Titan
By: - Apr 14th, 2016Tenor titan, Sonny Rollins, is the last of the greatest generation of post bop jazz. While a troubled teen he launched a career with many phases and changes that has lasted for decades.
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Degenerate Art
Les Fleurs du mal
By: - Apr 13th, 2016Too often great artists drawing on their family and wrecked lives as inspiration for theatre and literature pay a terrible price for that Faustian contract. So it was with the American masters, O'Neill, Williams, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. There is the vicarious pleasure of experiencing their work.
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Great American Songbook
Liza, Feinstein and Cook
By: - Apr 12th, 2016During an ATCA meeting in Indianapolis we visited the Performing Arts Center in nearby Carmel, Indiana. The artistic director of the stunning theatre is Michael Feinstein. The complex houses the growing archive for his advocacy of the Great American Songbook. Through his performances and collecting activity the mandate is to keep vibrant the legacy of more than a century of great Broadway musicals. He was joined that night by Barbara Cook. That summer at Tanglewood Liza Minelli took a train from New York to join him as a guest on stage.
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Herbie Hancock
Lyrical Post Modernist
By: - Apr 11th, 2016From 1963 to 1968 Herbie Hancock played piano for the Miles Davis Second Great Quintet. It included a teenager Boston drummer, Tony Williams, Ron Carter on bass and, after some changes, Wayne Shorter on horns. Hancock was fired for flimsy reasons and replaced by Chick Corea who was replaced by Keith Jarrett. Hancock continued to record with Miles after he was sacked. Later the Quintet reformed as V.S.O.P. with Freddy Hubbard replacing Davis.
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Modern Lovers
Ever Petulant Jonathan Richman
By: - Apr 10th, 2016Influenced by the Velvets the Modern Lovers were the greatest 1970s band that never made it. Their records dribbled our after they broke up. Ever adolescent and erratic Jonathan Richman wanted to abandon the Velvets sound. He even refused to perform the paradigmatic Roadrunner. Drummer Dave Robinson joined The Cars. Keyboard player Jerry Harrison left for Talking Heads. Bass player Ernie Brooks backed a variety of artists. Over the years, ever morphing, Jonathan has a loyal cult following. He recorded the music of the film There's Something About Mary.
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