- Arts Archive

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Blame It on Magritte - The artist's entertaining perversity veils his broad influence

You might assume that the Photoshop fantasias of our age would make the visual conundrums of Ren Magritte's pre-war paintings feel quaint. Certainly the beguiling originality of his fractured figures and enigmatic objects has been obscured over the...

by R. C. Baker on October 2, 2013
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The Propeller Group Take on the Art World's Celebrity Fixation - No country for poor men

"Are celebrities the new art stars?" asked a Newsweek cover story in July. A few months later, certain windy developments (or popcorn farts) that passed for world-shaking events on TMZ and CNN answered in the affirmative. In the wake of Miley Cyrus'...

by Christian Viveros-Faune on September 25, 2013
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Q&A: Mario Alberto Zambrano on Taking the Leap From Dancer to Novelist With Lotera

The game Lotera can best be described as a Mexican version of bingo, but instead of numbers, each card bears a striking image, such as beautiful sea goddess La Sirena or ominous skull La Calavera. In Mario Alberto Zambrano's debut novel, Lotera, i...

by Araceli Cruz on September 25, 2013
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Arguendo Is Full of Supremely Naughty Charm

Who knew Supreme Court justices have such complicated, libidinous inner lives? Anthony Kennedy muses on adults-only car washes. Sandra Day O'Connor contemplates pornographic videos. Antonin Scalia obsesses over nude opera. These racy reveries appear...

by Alexis Soloski on September 25, 2013
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Anna Nicole: A Cautionary Tale Against Gigantic Breast Implants

What homeless diva recently threatened to commit suicide if her rich patrons didn't cough up $20 million by the end of the year? That's right--the New York City Opera. So if you find it incongruous that the organization's potential (and possibly tem...

by James Hannaham on September 25, 2013
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Tragic Lovers Get Teenage Kicks in Romeo and Juliet Revival

The ardor animating the latest Romeo and Juliet seems less the marriage of true minds than the commingling of hot bods. In David Leveaux's revival at Broadway's Richard Rodgers, Orlando Bloom, 34, and Condola Rashad, 26, halve their ages to play doo...

by Alexis Soloski on September 25, 2013
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Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Latest Movingly Illustrates a Sexual Awakening

Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life and Times: Episodes 4.5 and 5--at this year's Crossing the Line Festival--are the newest installments in an epic performance depicting the life story of Kristin Worrall, one of the company's collaborators. Previous ...

by Miriam Felton-Dansky on September 25, 2013
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Angel Otero's Digs On Frayed Canvases and Crumbled Sculptures

Ruins are the remnants of man-made architecture: once-complete structures collapsed into timeworn bits through lack of upkeep or deliberate destruction. Think of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Tikal--or the burned carcass of 20th-century modernism, for that...

by Christian Viveros-Fauné on September 18, 2013
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Mike Daisey's Epic Project Is Good, So Far

It's unusual to review a show after only seeing about a tenth of it. But All the Faces of the Moon, master monologist Mike Daisey's epic new serial project--now playing at Joe's Pub--defies many dramatic norms. Daisey is syncing theater's rhythms t...

by Jacob Gallagher-Ross on September 18, 2013
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Ring Tone: Fetch Clay, Make Man - Playwright Will Power rolls with the puches

In 1969, during his exile from boxing, Muhammad Ali starred in a Broadway musical, Buck White. A tuneful spoof of the black power movement, the show included the songs "We Came in Chains," "Mighty Whitey," and "HNIC." Ali played the titular lead an...

by Alexis Soloski on September 18, 2013
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Delightfully Bad Behavior Abounds in The Old Friends

Horton Foote began writing The Old Friends in 1963 or '64, as a sort of sequel to his early play, Only the Heart. Between '64 and Foote's death in 2009, something like 30 of his new plays saw full productions. The Old Friends never did. There's a r...

by Brandon K. Thorp on September 18, 2013
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The Simpsons Survive the Apocalypse in the Stellar Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play

Is it tragic that tens of millions of people's entire conception of Gilbert & Sullivan comes from a minute or so of silliness on a Simpsons episode? Or is it laudable that The Simpsons, once our culture's smartest pop phenomenon, at least managed to...

by Alan Scherstuhl on September 18, 2013
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Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing Is Imperfect Human Comedy

An agreeably minor comedy in both scope and key, Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing opens with a surefire farcical premise and then, to its credit, refuses to fire the surest shots. Gretchen and Laura, a pair of moneyed lesbians eager to have a child, op...

by Alan Scherstuhl on September 18, 2013
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stop.reset. Is Loaded With Empty Significance and Trendy Buzzwords

Actor-director-playwright Regina Taylor's quasi-experimental stop. reset. (Signature Theatre) takes place in the offices of the awkwardly named Alexander Ames Chicago Black Book Publishers, a business faintly reminiscent of the Johnson Publishing Co...

by James Hannaham on September 11, 2013
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The Machine Plays High-Stakes Computer Chess

Despite its title, The Machine isn't really about Deep Blue, the supercomputer that famously beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. As rendered by Matt Charman and bombastically directed by Josie Rourke at the Park Avenue Armory, the story i...

by Jacob Gallagher-Ross on September 11, 2013
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Lens Crafted: MOMA Focuses on Walker Evans

Nestled in a central gallery on the fourth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, between rooms containing seminal works by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol, "Walker Evans American Photographs" consists of approximately...

by Brienne Walsh on September 11, 2013
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Lucy Thurber's Five-Play Cycle Examines Poverty's Impact

Being from Western Massachusetts myself, I was excited to sample The Hill Town Plays, Lucy Thurber's cycle of five dramas set amid the hamlets and college towns west of Boston and east of the Berkshires. The series, produced by the Rattlestick and r...

by Miriam Felton-Dansky on September 11, 2013
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The Most Thrilling Novel Published This Summer Is 80 Years Old and Hungarian

Although it's double-stuffed with counts and balls, with duels and scandal and exquisitely described hunting parties, with idealists debating affairs of state and gambling rakes caught in dumb, doomed love, Mikls Bnffy's sweeping Transylvanian Tri...

by Alan Scherstuhl on September 11, 2013
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The Recommendation Is Hard to Recommend

Ever had a friend whom you both love and love to hate? One who feels like a parasite sucking at your soul, but whom you can't cut loose, because, ultimately, you need them more than they need you? A study in the complexities of friendship and cla...

by Joseph Cermatori on September 11, 2013
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Four-Color Revolution - Protest that got your hands dirty

In his introduction to this superbly illustrated compendium of underground newspapers, editor Geoff Kaplan channels the 1960s' exuberant ad-hoc vibe by referring to his book as "Power of the People," despite the title on the cover--Power to the Peop...

by R. C. Baker on September 4, 2013