DePaul Art Museum

There’s a new museum in town. Yet I’m not sure how many Chicagoans know the good news. The DePaul Art Museum opened last September in a new, three-story structure adjoining the Fullerton CTA stop.

The museum is only new in a technical sense. Since 1998, it has been housed in two large rooms within Richardson Library, unknown to outside passersby. Louise Lincoln, its highly capable director since 1997, has mounted numerous noteworthy exhibitions under serious limitations.

Though art has been present on campus from 1985, it was hidden in the literal sense. What the striking red brick building achieves is a freestanding space for the museum’s art collection (2,000 objects with extensive holdings of Chicago art) with the size (15,000 sq. ft.) and facilities (a new collection study room) befitting a true museum. It also signifies the university’s growing commitment to the arts.

A tip of the hat is warranted for the contextually-rich design by Antunovich Associates, their first museum project.

My earlier post focused on Chicago’s formerly feisty publication, The New Art Examiner, and its dedicated focus on Chicago and the greater Midwest art community. Lincoln and assistant director, Laura Fatemi, opted for an equally strong local focus and provocative theme for their opening show

Re: Chicago opens with a wall text that states, “Chicago rivals—and surpasses—other cities in music, architecture and theater; yet in the visual arts, it has too frequently been seen as a ‘second city’.”  Though many prominent artists, past and present, sport Chicago connections, many left and made their reputations elsewhere.

The exhibit seeks to reframe Chicago as a true artistic center vis-a-vis other centers such as Paris, New York and even Los Angeles. Alongside the Chicago theme, Lincoln chose a novel way to showcase the chosen works: a group-curated show. She polled 43 curators, collectors, critics and scholars to name a favorite Chicago artist. The result is an alternate canon of the famous, the no longer famous and the ought to be famous.

Ivan Albright

The show is both a delight to walk through and an entertaining guessing game. New discoveries loom at each hang while one wonders what did James Elkins, Neil Harris, Lew Manilow and James Rondeau choose? For every known artist like Ivan Albright, Karl Wirsum, Dawoud Bey and Richard Hunt, there was the thrill of discovering Manierre Dawson, Art Shay, Macena Barton, Irving Petlin and many more. Most surprising was Franz Schulze’s backward reach into the mid-19^th Century for now-forgotten portraitist, George Healy, along with the absence of Ed Paschke, Roger Brown or Jim Nutt.

Manierre Dawson

You’ll want to take home the show’s colorful, attractively-designed catalog to reread not only each curator’s supporting statement but for the scholarly essays buttressing Chicago’s claim for its rightful place in the art world.

Wendy Greenhouse skillfully argues that Chicago’s art tradition has run counter to the prevailing canon throughout history. Its artists have long favored representational or surreal (“cartoonish”) work over an East Coast canon dominated by abstract, expressionistic art.

Karl Wirsum

Lynne Warren champions Chicago’s “extraordinary photographic legacy” and bemoans the near-criminal neglect of such masters as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind and other renowned figures.

If you are an art lover, you owe it to yourself to get to the DePaul Art Museum by March 4 to catch this appealing yet ultimately serious show. The museum’s next exhibition will feature African photographer, Malick Sidibe. It opens March 29.

DePaul Art Museum is located at 935 West Fullerton Avenue. For information on public events and hours, call 773/325-7506 or visit www.depaul.edu/museum.

Derek Guthrie

It has been 10 years since The New Art Examiner published its final issue. The monthly magazine, which called itself “Chicago’s Independent Voice of the Visual Arts,” enjoyed a rough but highly-respected run from 1973 to 2002. It was born in controversy by founding editors, Jane Addams Allen and Derek Guthrie. Besides coverage of local and regional exhibits, the publication adopted a reportorial, contrarian stance toward the value systems and practices of the art world that raised a lot of critical dust.

Under the helm of successive editors, it gained a large following among artists, a national readership and critical influence beyond the Midwest. It was disheartening to hear at a panel discussion last November that the history and contribution of Chicago’s only successful art magazine was virtually unknown among younger critics and art students.

Authors Terri Griffith, Kathryn Born and Janet Koplos have now stepped into the breach and assembled an enlightening anthology of articles in “The Essential New Art Examiner,” newly-published by Northern Illinois University Press. In so doing, they have resurrected this ever-lively publication and shown what was lost with its passing.

Griffith, at an all-day symposium (“Re-Examining the New Art Examiner”) last Saturday at Northern Illinois’ campus, called the Examiner “a newspaper for artists” to which each editor, over its 30-year run, brought their own views and interests. These new voices, who shared the founding editors’ commitment to an independent local outlet, not only kept the Examiner alive once Allen and Guthrie relocated to Washington, D. C. but also helped establish Chicago’s growing national recognition as a true art center.

The New Art Examiner published my first forays in art reportage. A cover story on an infamous trial of the 1980s involving the George F. Harding Museum earned me my first Examiner byline. Following that scandal, I next investigated the nationwide lack of defined ethical guidelines at major art museums.

While most institutions now have written guidelines governing staff, trustee and curatorial conduct, ethical issues around collection management still arouse controversy 30 years later.

While I hung around the Examiner’s office mainly from 1980-82, Guthrie’s introduction to the book, along with his and Jane Allen’s opening essay and Frank Pannier passionate rant opened my eyes to Chicago’s art world circa 1973.

Essential New Art Examiner

Besides giving young art writers their first exposure in print, the book contains many thoughtful essays that still resonate by prominent critics and curators: Peter Schjeldahl (now at The New Yorker), Hilton Kramer (The New Criterion), Janet Koplos (Art in America), Alice Thorsen (now at Kansas City Star), Lynne Warren (MCA) and Hamza Walker (Renaissance Society). Schjeldahl’s 1985 “Chicagoization” article is a classic. The historical recaps by five former editors are a nice personal touch. Only a handful of the 27 selections were duds.

While the book does not pretend to be a complete history, which remains to be written, it is an essential primer to a colorful and contentious period in Chicago art lost to generations who came after. (NIU art historian, Barbara Jaffee, has written a highly perceptive analysis of the Examiner’s origins and history. For a copy of her catalog essay that accompanied NIU Museum’s exhibition on the New Art Examiner, write bjaffee@niu.edu.)

Unfortunately, the New Art Examiner was never supported with advertising by most dealers or, especially, the city’s two major museums. Book artist, Buzz Spector, called the New Art Examiner “the chronic outsider of the art world.” An early director at the Museum of Contemporary Art banned the magazine from the museum shop.

Guthrie writes that he and Jane Allen “learned by bitter experience that there is no freedom for criticism or criticality.” Dealers at the time failed to see any reason to support a publication with an independent voice that could not be controlled.

Former NY Times reporter, Judith Dobrzynski, in her recent blog on ArtsJournal confirms that Guthrie’s complaint lives on today. She asked, “Does the visual arts world need sharper criticism? Yes….When was the last time you read a learned, thoughtful, well-argued critique of a museum or gallery exhibition that was negative?”

One would like to think that Chicago’s frosty reception toward the Examiner is a thing of the past. However, the more recent demise of Chicago Artist News in 2010 is a fresh reminder bespeaking a pattern of poor institutional support.

While blogs proliferate online, none carry the critical authority and agenda-setting power of a print publication like ArtNews or Artforum. So long as Chicago’s art community fails to support its own artists with its own editorial outlet, New York will monopolize the national art dialogue. Chicago will continue to make do with periodic scraps and its art community will remain a provincial center.

The Essential New Art Examiner is now in bookstores or from the publisher at www.niupress.niu.edu

Savvy theatergoers know Next Theatre in Evanston offers provocative and artistically adventurous work without fail. Next, which celebrated its 30^th anniversary last season, is a company that, along with Steppenwolf, Wisdom Bridge and a host of small, storefront troupes, put Chicago Theater on the national map in the 1980s.

Though housed in modest quarters at the Noyes Cultural Center, Next has always had outsize ambitions, choosing works by gifted playwrights and mounting top-flight productions.  Its latest, “The Girl in the Yellow Dress,” is a smart, erotically-charged drama in which language fuels intense interactions between an English tutor and her French-Congolese student.

Celia is an Englishwoman in her 20s, living in Paris and offering English lessons, we assume, to help cover expenses. When we learn her family is quite wealthy, her motives become more mysterious.  Pierre is a handsome black man who says he wants to master English because it “is the language of the world,” a place that seems foreign and closed to him.

Carrie Coon & Austin Talley

So far, all seems quite innocent and reasonable. But, as the one-act drama unfolds, this initial facade falls away and the audience is plunged into the realm of psychodrama. By the second scene, Pierre begins his seduction of Celia who, at first, uses the rules of English grammar for self-protection and to keep him at bay.

She keeps quizzing Pierre on English’s convoluted verb constructions like the conditional and subjunctive tenses. The lessons, however, are a mere pretext for verbal foreplay.  As they trade life stories, Celia and Pierre strive to make a human connection but differences of race, class and gender intrude.

South African playwright, Craig Higginson, has written an intelligent and lively drama full of revealing twists and turns. “Girl” was a praised and much-talked-about entry at the 2010 Edinburgh Festival.

The two-person cast delivers convincing performances. While Austin Talley moves capably from hesitant student to silky seducer, it is Carrie Coon who captures Celia’s complex personality most convincingly. Director Joanie Schultz ably finds the wit amid the tension in Higginson’s script and keeps the action taut and gripping.

A special tip of the hat goes to scenic designers Jacqueline and Richard Penrod whose Paris flat looks like a million bucks and is the perfect bachelorette pad.  Next’s second play of the season is a winner. If sharp dialogue and intriguing characters are your preferred theater fare, rest assured that “The Girl in the Yellow Dress” delivers.

The play runs through February 26^th. Tickets can be ordered at www.nexttheatre.org or by calling the theater office at 847/475-1875, ext. 2.

Bill Russo

The Chicago Jazz Ensemble has had only 3 music directors in its 47-year history.  Bill Russo, an esteemed jazz composer/arranger, who played in Stan Kenton’s orchestra in the 1950s, was the first director.

Russo founded the CJE in 1965 which, since its earliest days, has been the jazz orchestra in residence at Columbia College. Jazz fans and all Chicagoans owe Columbia a large vote of thanks for its continuous support through thick and thin economic times. Only the Jazz Showcase has been around the jazz scene longer.

The 17-member band built its repertoire around classic jazz performers with an early emphasis on Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington and later, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis. The band also featured many of Russo’s own compositions.

When Russo died in 2003, trumpeter Jon Faddis (regarded as the stylistic heir to Dizzy Gillespie), was chosen as his successor. Faddis raised the quality of CJE’s musicianship. He expanded the playbook with more contemporary jazz works and new commissions and arrangements from such giants as Frank Foster, Slide Hampton and young lions Ed Wilkerson and Jim Gailloreto.

Dana Hall

Acclaimed drummer Dana Hall became the third director last season. A busy sideman, he has appeared on more than 20 albums including his 2009 debut album as a leader, “Into the Light”.  He has put his own mark on the ensemble this season with two new features: concerts that feature the playbook of more recent jazz giants and alternating smaller ensemble outings with the regular big-band concerts.

Last month, Hall led a driving performance by a quintet that paid tribute to drummer and mentor to many, Art Blakey (1919-1990), titled “Buhaina’s Delight” (Blakey’s Buddhist name).  Hall said of Blakey, “He kept the music happy.”

Hall opened with a ferocious roll of rimshots and tom-toms. Like Blakey, his playing during the rest of the concert was emphatic and often upfront but appropriately subdued in trio settings.  I regretted that the set included several, more recent, arrangements by Wayne Shorter but overlooked works by pianist, Horace Silver, an important member of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

Hall’s experiments with programming are worth supporting. The CJE’s next outing by the full ensemble is this Friday (January 20^th) at the Harris Theater.  It features two of jazz’s most promising young stars: bassist Christian McBride and vocalist Meshell Ndegeocello paying tribute to one of jazz’s larger-than-life figures, bassist/composer Charles Mingus (1922-1979).

I hope to hear McBride play such Mingus classics at “Better Git It in Your Soul” and “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”.  Ndegeocello will perform much later songs Mingus composed in collaboration with Joni Mitchell.

Another Hall innovation is two noontime “Listening Room” sessions prior to Friday’s concert. McBride will perform on January 18^th and Ndegeocello will be featured on Thursday. I heartily support this attempt to present the artists in a more intimate atmosphere that allows for listener interaction.

Chicago Jazz Ensemble

These are not easy times for jazz and particularly large ensembles like The Chicago Jazz Ensemble. Institutional and government funding has been cut. Yet its mission to honor the music’s pioneers and maintain our link with jazz history, is more important than ever.

All attenders of the Green Mill Lounge, Jazz Showcase and Jazz at Symphony Center should add Chicago’s own Preservation Jazz Band to the list. The musicians are among Chicago’s top jazz performers and Hall is injecting the troupe with a shot of high energy and imagination.

To purchase tickets and see the remaining schedule of CJE performances, go to www.chicagojazzensemble.com.

While on the subject of jazz, I recommend a new book about a heretofore unexplored side of the music. “Blue Notes in Black and White: Photograph and Jazz” by Benjamin Cawthra (University of Chicago Press). This highly-readable book is based on the idea that “photographs not only show stories but also shape them.”

"Blue Notes in Black and White"

Cawthra, a historian, writes with elan about the vital role jazz photographs played in capturing African American culture during a time of tumult, from the swing era of the 1930s to the rise of black nationalism in the 1960s.

Over the past two decades, I became very interested in the work of these great photographers —especially William Gottlieb, Herman Leonard and William Claxton—from seeing small shows of their work.  I wanted to know more about the people behind the lens. We now know the fascinating story, thanks to Cawthra.

His book is an in-depth look at the multiple contributions of these artists: capturing now-legendary performers live at club dates, helping record labels sell magazines and albums, crafting musicians’ public images to further their financial and political goals.

I learned a lot about jazz history and the important partnership these two art forms forged during a key period in the music and black culture. It’s good to see these photographers finally getting their due.

L. T. Selman, Ltd. Gallery

Editor’s Note: The blogs posted this month feature lesser-known personal discoveries that can provide enjoyable holiday outings.

One evening in late October, I entered Studio 207 in the Fine Arts Building and discovered a whole new world. For several long moments, I stood transfixed by the sight of approximately 700 paperweights on display in long glass cases.

In my mind, paperweights are associated with Chicago real estate developer and fanatical collector, Arthur Rubloff, who donated his collection of 1472 rare and beautiful objects to the Art Institute in 1978.

Paperweights, however, suffer a reputation as being an art world lightweight. The latest slap came in today’s Chicago Tribune (Dec. 21) where the writer says Rubloff’s collection has little place in the museum. The Art Institute seems to share a similar view of this decorative art since it displays them in the lower level near the famous Thorne Rooms in a scenario reminiscent of “Upstairs/Downstairs”.

I imagined that paperweight production had ceased in recent years. Not so. In speaking with Alexis Magaro, the gallery manager, I learned that a large number of highly-skilled artisans are producing new, imaginative designs with many on display at the studio.

The studio is the new home of L.H. Selman Ltd. It is named for Lawrence Selman, one of the world’s leading paperweight collectors (he assembled Rubloff’s collection). In 2009, two brothers, Ben and Mitch Clark, who come from a family of paperweight collectors, bought Selman’s collection and shipped it from California to Chicago.

In fact, Chicago houses the largest collection of antique and modern paperweights in America. (The Bergstrom-Mahler Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin houses the largest museum collection in the world dedicated to paperweights). About 700 objects are on display, but Magaro says about 4,000 are on the premises.

While paper dates from the Egyptian era over 4,000 years ago and glassmaking artistry is 3,500 years old, paperweights date only from 1845 with Venetian glassmakers in Murano, Italy. The most spectacular examples of this art, though, came from France during paperweights’ brief heyday from the 1850s to the 1890s.

The Victorian era was a sentimental time when letter-writing became a fad. Paperweights were sold in stationery stores as an attractive accessory to desk sets. The finest such objects came from the French factories of Saint Louis, then Clichy and Baccarat. But, by 1860, their production fell off sharply.

American paperweight manufacturing was centered around Boston and New England. Since most glassmakers were European immigrants, American designs were imitative of European models. Art Elder, an authority on paperweights, says that what American designs lacked in originality, they made up for in ingenuity which collectors find more charming and desirable.

Once French production ceased, collecting, primarily by aristocracy and royalty, began. Queen Victoria and Queen Mary were collectors as was Napoleon III. You should ask Alexis about the connection between pansy paperweights and the Bonapartist movement.

Magaro led me on a historical tour of the main paperweight designs. The earliest examples contained a profile in bas-relief of a person to be commemorated. Then came the millefiori (meaning thousand flowers in Italian). Lampwork designs include sculpted flowers, animals or insects.

What I found fascinating is that the flowers, animals or insects are made of glass, so minutely crafted and at miniature scale that you’d swear they were the real thing trapped within the glass casingl.

Paperweights can range widely in price. Magaro said that, while the vast majority range from $500 to $5,000, prices can hit the $10,000 to $25,000 range for rare examples. However, one can find holiday designs on Selman’s website for $175 and some petite millefiori designs are a steal at only $26.

Value is determined by a number of factors: the maker (French are generally the most valuable), symmetry and centering of the design, no internal flaws such as bubbles or cracks, size (the larger the better) and visual impact or the “wow” factor.

L.H. Selman is a full-service gallery. It buys and sells paperweights, handles sales on consignments for collectors and conducts sales auctions twice a year. It enjoys an international reputation.

Mere words can’t do justice to the visual delight and pleasure of holding one of these creations in your hand. You still have more than a week to sample this holiday treat. And maybe even get that last-minute holiday gift. You owe it to yourself to discover what Elder calls “one of the world’s best-kept secrets”.

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L.H. Selman Ltd. is in Room 207 at 410 South Michigan Avenue. Phone is 312.583.1177. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and by appointment on weekends. Its website, www.selman.com features a lot of interesting information and photos, of course.

Driehaus Museum

If you passed the imposing three-story brownstone at 40 East Erie in recent years, you would have found the building dark and open only by appointment. One would never know that, beyond the front door, lies one of nation’s grandest mansions of the Gilded Age. However, with the arrival of Lise Dube-Scherr last April as director, the Richard H. Driehaus Museum has come alive.

The museum is now open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Sundays 12-5 p.m and closed Monday). Banners identifying the museum hang above the front door and the public is warmly welcomed inside for personal tours of this architectural and decorative arts showpiece. Ms. Dube-Scherr has worked hard in the last nine months to establish a membership program, themed visits and evening soirees as might have been held in the home by its original owners.

Noted investment adviser, Richard Driehaus, is passionate about architectural preservation and decorative arts. He purchased the mansion in 2003 and then spent several million dollars over five years restoring it to its former glory. He has also lent the house period furnishings, works from his art collection, pieces from his extensive collection of Tiffany-designed lamps and antique chandeliers; all to give the galleries a true feeling of late 19^th Century splendor.

Samuel Nickerson, the founder of the First National Bank of Chicago, was the original owner. He and his family lived there from 1887 to 1900. It cost a staggering $450,000 to build the 25,000 square foot mansion, the largest private residence in Chicago when it was completed (the cost in 2011 dollars would exceed $100 million). That part of town, at the time, was known as McCormickville since several members of the McCormick family lived in the area.

Nickerson sold the house to Lucius Fisher, a paper-bag manufacturer and big-game hunting enthusiast, who resided there until his death in 1916. Fearing that it might be demolished, one hundred prominent Chicagoans, including William Wrigley, Cyrus McCormick and Julius Rosenwald, bought the home and donated it to the American College of Surgeons, for use as its headquarters.

Driehaus Main Hall

Inside the front door on Erie (though early visitors arrived by horse-drawn coach at a porte cochere on the side), you enter a two-story Main Hall and your jaw drops.

Straight ahead you see a grand staircase that leads to the family’s living quarters on the second floor and ballroom. Off the main hall on both sides are the Front Parlor, Reception Room, Drawing Room, Dining Room, Smoking Room, Library and the stunning Sculpture Gallery.

At your feet, the floor is covered in 17 kinds of inlaid marble. The house quickly became known as The Marble Palace. Equally impressive are the wood moldings used for the rooms’ rich wainscotting and the dropped ceilings’ paneling. The majestic Sculpture Gallery holds three masterpieces, making it hard to choose a favorite: the 19^th-Century  sculpture of “Cupid and Psyche”, a 7-foot-high fireplace with a gorgeous fireplace surround of mosaic tile and an oversize Tiffany-inspired dome overhead.

"Cupid and Psyche"

Other special touches in rooms throughout the house include inlaid marquetry wood in the Library, rare blue-green wall tiles, fabrics by Scalamandre and some original sconses and small flickering gas lights. Such detail and craftsmanship is unavailable today, even in the infamous McMansions erected by modern-day financial wizards.

I cannot readily recall being as overwhelmed by the beauty of a private residence as I was touring Driehaus’ recreation of the Nickerson mansion. Dube-Scherr points out that “we’re not trying to perfectly recreate how the house appeared in Nickerson’s time but to give people a sense of what life was like in the Gilded Age.”

To that end, she scheduled strolling carolers, an evening cabaret performance and a magic show for family visitors during the holiday season. Twilight tours, on the first and third Tuesday of each month, let visitors glimpse how the Nickersons socialized in the evening.

Looking for a different holiday treat? A visit to the museum strikes me as a perfect outing. Its “Deck the Marble Halls” observance is on daily (except Mondays) through January 8^th. You can take a self-guided audio tour or a guided tour daily at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. (1:30 and 3 p.m. on Sunday).

Admission is $20, $12.50 for seniors and $10 for students, children under 18.

The Museum is also available for rental for intimate dinners, private receptions, board meetings. Dube-Scherr says she is awaiting its first wedding booking. For full details, visit the museum at

www.DriehausMuseum.org. Phone is 312/932-8665.

Renee had a point. It is one that Lyric Opera began pressing home this September in a series of images plastered extensively throughout Chicago on billboards, buildings and bus shelters. The images mainly feature Fleming and music director Andrew Davis making equally provocative statements. The tag line on all the messages is “Long Live Passion”.

As much as “Tales of Hoffman,” “The Magic Flute” and “Aida,” Lyric this season is promoting passion. And why not?  While opera-goers feel passionate about Lyric and the art form, that is not the way opera plays on the street and among most young Chicagoans.

Ask them what their impression of opera is and their replies will probably be some version of “stuffy,” “boring,” “for rich people,” and “not for me.” Well, the “Long Live Passion” campaign is out to change that and give Lyric a more contemporary, inviting image.

What are the tales of “Romeo and Juliet,” “Boris Godunov,” “Madame Butterfly,” “La Boheme” and “Faust” to limit the list to five choices but timeless stories of man’s insatiable lust for power and passion?  Lyric, in recent seasons, has also opened itself to staging newer repertoire, like “Candide,” “Porgy and Bess,” and this season’s “Showboat” that pay tribute to crowd-pleasing compositions that can arguably be ranked as 20^th Century American operettas.

With this ad campaign, Lyric is moving forcefully to attract a larger audience—youth and adult—to the magic of live opera. To feel moved, to cry, cheer, even be changed by what they see and hear. Here’s to its success! Visit: www.LyricOpera.org

As a location for movies production, Chicago has been a favored movie town since the mid-1980s. Many films, ranging from John Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club” and “The Untouchables” up to “Batman” and the recent “Transformers 3” used the city’s neighborhoods and landmarks as stunning visual backdrops.

For filmgoers who want to see serious films (made for adults rather than 14 year-olds), however, the situation is not as rosy. Compared  to New York and Los Angeles, the country’s two film capitals, Chicago remains an also-ran. The Chicago Film Festival in October and the Siskel Film Center’s European Film Festival each March are indispensable for staying in touch with new and established international filmmakers. The Music Box, Century Landmark and Facets Multimedia do a fine job screening the cream of the foreign and indie crop but many worthy films languish lacking distribution and never reach the Midwest.

Chicago excels, however, in its long roster of top-flight film critics; one, Roger Ebert, enjoys a reputation that spans the globe. Over the past year, The University of Chicago Press, in a gesture worthy of a publishing Oscar, has issued books honoring three of the finest—Ebert, Dave Kehr and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

David Kehr's book

Kehr and Rosenbaum’s books collect a generous sample of past reviews and essays in hardcover, according them a well-deserved second life. These two critics revisit an era (roughly 1980 to 2005) radically different from the present, providing Chicago moviegoers, especially those born after 1980, with valuable historical insight on that period’s directors and cinematic high points.

My own awakening to film with foreign films by now-iconic directors occurred in the 1960s. That was a period many consider cinema’s “Golden Age.”  From the age of 17 to 35, I spent countless hours in the dark at Greenwich Village and Upper West Side movie houses in NY and at the American Film Institute theater in D.C. catching each new release by Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. This was also the period when a new generation of daring American filmmakers—Arthur Penn, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Jonathan Demme—made groundbreaking films. Movies then seemed more important. We went to see them, argued over them and formed personal opinions about their worth, a rarer feat nowadays.

A Changed World

Kehr and Rosenbaum pick up the action one generation removed from that cinematic renaissance. Reading their books makes one aware how much film culture has changed in the interval since my youth. Both critics spill much ink analyzing movies from the director’s perspective (according to French auteur theory at the time, the director is a film’s most important player)

Today, the focus turns on the opening weekend’s box-office receipts. In place of once lengthy essays, many critics now dash off capsule reviews or cast thumbs in judgment. And the internet has produced what Rosenbaum says is not two versions (paper vs. online) of criticism but two separate enterprises.

During earlier times, critics at major papers and magazines enjoyed wide sway with readers and studio execs. Ebert began his career at the Sun-Times while the appearance of alternative weeklies (like The Reader) opened the process to newcomers like Kehr and Rosenbaum at The Village Voice in New York and abroad.

Kehr, the Reader’s first film critic from 1974 to 1986, enjoyed the luxury of editorial space, allowing him to write long-form essays, a practice Rosenbaum, his successor, carried on until 2008.

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Only specialized film journals carry lengthy critiques today. Kehr laments that more than words have been lost. “When a format disappears, sometimes a way of thinking disappears with it.” Rosenbaum thinks that while cinema, meaning the viewing of films in movie houses, is dying, the current explosion of movies and criticism on the internet or in DVD form (“cinephilia”) can be a welcome development.

While the two critics wrote for The Reader, I often found their choice of films too esoteric and their writing too insider for my taste. Yet, as I read both Kehr and Rosenbaum decades later, I realized that the fault lay mainly with my less-advanced  knowledge of film figures and technique back then.

Some of the most satisfying moments came when I discovered my highly favorable opinion of the 1977 film, “Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000” was shared by Kehr or my admiration for four prominent directors, Jean Renoir, Alain Tanner, Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme was reinforced.

Rosenbaum’s writing is the more challenging writer. However, essays such as “Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia”, “The American Cinema Revisited” and “Film Writing on the Web” contained many cogent observations. To be fair, I’ll let Ebert have the last word. He calls Rosenbaum “a great film critic and I’ve learned so much over the years from his wise writing.”

An Inspiring Cinephile

Roger Ebert

Ebert has long been recognized as one of America’s top film critics. Unfortunately, his health travails have dominated news in recent years. In his new anthology, “The Big Movies 3,” the qualities that earned him a Pulitzer Prize are on full display: a love for movies of every stripe, an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, an amazing ability for visual detail combined with articulate writing delivered in a conversational tone.

For this volume, as with the two earlier titles in the series, Ebert, every two weeks, sat at his table and crafted 100 new essays, all while undergoing chemotherapy treatments; a true profile in courage. I’m sure viewing the DVDs of these favorites a second or third time energized him.

These 100 are not the greatest films of all time, he claims, since he finds such lists “foolish.” Rather, they are movies to which he reacted passionately. He brings each film to life, casting his net as far back as the 1936 “My Man Godfrey” and up to the recent “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006).

The essays’ value lies not only in helping us relive our own memories but in supplying a handy Netflix list of memorable films we missed on the first go-round.

My shopping list contains Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole”, Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”, Orson Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight”, Renoir’s “The River”, Kenzi Mizoguchi’s “Sansho the Bailiff” and Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” and “Me and Orson Welles”.

While I intend to catch some holiday releases in the Cineplex over the next six weeks, staying home with a good bottle of wine or champagne watching those classics work their magic may be the better choice.

Check these out:

Roger Ebert—The Great Movies III

Dave Kehr—When Movies Mattered: Reviews from a Transformative Decade

Jonathan Rosenbaum—Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition

All published by University of Chicago Press, www.press.UChicago.edu

Note: Readers can rent these titles from the publisher in e-book format for 30 days viewing for just $7.

Photo by Jason Pickleman

The years from 1984-1990 were especially fertile for big cultural ideas in Chicago. I can’t pinpoint what was in the air at the time. But it gave rise to three festivals that have gone on to become vital, civic-boosting traditions. Each is now an eagerly-awaited annual event on the city’s calendar. I’m referring to the Printer’s Row Book Fair (1984), Art Chicago (1985) and the Chicago Humanities Festival (1990).

The first two festivals are celebrated each Spring while CHF, now in its 22^nd year, is as much a part of October/November in town as autumn leaves, Halloween and Thanksgiving. For me, Thanksgiving actually arrives on the first weekend of November. I revel in the chance to gobble up the rich stew of stimulating opinions offered by leading speakers from around the nation and globe on an organizing theme.

The theme this year is Tech Knowledge. We all are aware how technology has impacted our daily lives. As Matti Bunzel, the festival’s director, states, “Every week something becomes obsolete. Facebook has replaced face time. Books are dead. Even the World Wide Web is in danger of becoming old hat as mobile applications make technology ever more portable.”

Trying to make sense of it all and its impact on our culture (less than a month after the death of tech hero, Steve Jobs) is a theme that is highly topical and around which Bunzel and his staff have programmed more than 80 events. For me, the Chicago Humanities Festival is a semester of post-graduate education packed into 14 days.

Stephen Sondheim

My contribution to your time management and wallet is to pick a personal Top Ten that I think will prove rewarding.  That’s most rewarding for me. So don’t treat this list as gospel but more of a handy roadmap. I won’t be going to “Technology in Sports” or “Lend me Your (Bionic) Ears” if that helps you see where my bent lies. Deliberately missing are the star events such as Laurie Anderson on November 2 or Stephen Sondheim and Jonathan Franzen on November 6.

Here then is my personal Top Ten list. The program number is in parenthesis to help you in ordering tickets. The list is organized chronologically.

1. Guns, Germs & Steel—Jared Diamond   Nov. 3 (301)

Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of that title, highlighted technology’s role in human history and the rise and fall of civilizations. His talk will address our place in history and where technology may be taking us.

2. The Next Level: Gaming, Testing & Education’s Future-Nov. 5 (400)

James Gee is an education innovator who sees video games having a valuable educational purpose: providing an immersive experience where kids navigate technology to acquire knowledge and solve problems in a way appropriate to our digital age.

3. The Breakup 2.0   Nov. 5  (404)

Ilana Gershon, an anthropologist, discusses how new media affect our behavior in our intimate relationships.

4. Grand Pursuit—A Conversation with Sylvia Nasar   Nov. 5 (408)

Sylvia Nasar

My guilty pleasure selection. Nasar is the author of “A Beautiful Mind,” the biography of tortured mathematical genius, John Forbes Nash. Her new book examines the making of modern economics.  In light of recent Occupy Wall Street demonstrations aimed at the inequities of economics, which have been mobilized via digital technology, this may not be tangential to the topic at all.

5. Tomorrow’s History      Nov. 5    (411)

New digital technologies have shifted original research to online archives and new tools have created immersive presentations for the classroom. David Staley, head of Ohio State’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, talks about how history will be researched, written and taught in the future.

6. CSI:Picasso                  Nov. 6   (501)

Francesca Casadio is an art detective who has solved many mysteries. She will speak about her latest quest, using cutting-edge technology, to solve the mystery of Picasso’s paint.

7. A Jane Addams for the Digital Age Nov. 6    (510)

That is what Virginia Eubanks has been called. A scholar and political activist, she will reflect on her 10 years organizing for high-tech equity for poor and working class families. Does our electronic playground increase inequality and thwart social justice?

8. New Frontiers in Journalism   Nov. 9   (602)

David Carr

New York Times’ media columnist David Carr probes how journalism will be transformed—not only its business model but how the news will be delivered in the future—with two Mother Jones editors.

9. Sherry Turkle: Alone Together   Nov. 11  (605)

Noted MIT psychologist and sociologist Turkle studies the relationship between people and technology. Is our fascination with technology degrading our appreciation of authentic encounters and human relationships?

10.The Book: Past, Present and Future   Nov. 12  (704)

Is the book dead? What happens next for bound volumes?  Anthony Grafton, a leading historian of the book, addresses whether the future holds a utopia of an entire world library at our fingertips or anguish at the loss of this iconic artifact.

That’s my ten. But I see I’ve left out City of the Future, A Personal History (and Future) of the Electric Guitar and Serious Play: Meaningful Video Games. Make plans and allot enough time to attend a range of programs to experience the festival’s full, stimulating flavor and get updated on technology’s ever-increasing impact on all aspects of society.

For non-Chicago readers: Don’t you wish you lived here?

To purchase tickets to the 22^nd Chicago Humanities Festival, go to www.chicagohumanities.org or call their office at 312-494-9509.

]]> http://artsandabout.com/humanities/humanities-tackle-%e2%80%9ctech-knowledge%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 http://artsandabout.com/literary-theatre/%e2%80%9cred%e2%80%9d-paint-emotion-truth/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=%25e2%2580%259cred%25e2%2580%259d-paint-emotion-truth http://artsandabout.com/literary-theatre/%e2%80%9cred%e2%80%9d-paint-emotion-truth/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:47:23 +0000 Tom Mullaney http://artsandabout.com/?p=781 The period following the Second World War was the heyday for a group of artists known as Abstract Expressionists.  They were a group of artists, different in style and personality, who came together in New York’s Greenwich Village… Read more

Jackson Pollock Nunber 18

The period following the Second World War was the heyday for a group of artists known as Abstract Expressionists.  They were a group of artists, different in style and personality, who came together in New York’s Greenwich Village and hung out at their “clubhouse”, the Cedar Tavern, drinking and debating artistic ideas.  Among the most famous members of this group were Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko.

Ironically, none of them wished to be identified with that label. Asked by an interviewer to define Abstract Expressionism, Rothko replied, “I don’t get it and I don’t think my work has anything to do with Expressionism, abstract or any other.”

Pollock and de Kooning were highly physical, aggressive artists in putting paint to canvas while Newman and Rothko took a more cerebral approach. What united them was a belief that non-representational paintings, monumental in scale and manipulating color, line and form, could express emotional truths in the most direct way. They believed art mattered in a way that is foreign in today’s world. Rothko believed in the power of paint to express what writer Erin Hogan calls “nothing less than the condition of being human.”

"Red" at Goodman Theatre

This revolution in mid-20^th Century art production is the backdrop for “Red,” the Tony award-winning drama by John Logan, now at the Goodman Theatre. It takes us into Rothko’s cramped Bowery studio. The time is 1958 and Rothko is busy at work on an important commission—a series of large canvases to hang on the walls of the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagrams Building—and needs an assistant.

In walks Ken, a young art student eager to work with and learn from a master. It is a situation rife with master/servant, father/son overtones. At first, Ken is too cowed by the setting to respond when Rothko grills him about life and culture and finds him wanting.

Ken knows nothing of the philosopher Nietzsche or Bach’s Goldberg Variations, two of Rothko’s heroes. “You can’t be an artist if you’re not civilized,” taunts Rothko.

He points to the red and black canvas he is working on and asks, “What do you see?” Ken is too cowed to offer an opinion. Yet he gets the job.

Rothko & Assistant Ken

For the next two years, Ken works, diligently prepping canvases for Rothko, washing his brushes, hanging giant canvases, enduring the artist’s outbursts of verbal abuse. “Red” charts Ken’s growing self-identity and his metamorphosis into a worthy artistic opponent.

Halfway through the intermission-less play, the mood shifts. Ken grows unafraid to express his opinions of what he sees and they are bitingly critical of a one-time hero. Visiting gallery shows, he has seen new works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol and finds their energy superior to the arid air in Rothko’s studio. Now, as equal combatants, Ken challenges Rothko to face a momentous moral decision that propels the play to its stirring denouement.

You should catch the final week’s performances of “Red” (through Oct. 30). Edward Gero and Patrick Andrews give blazing performances as Rothko and Ken. Gero is riveting in conveying Rothko’s arrogance as well as the agony underlying his  creations while Ken delivers a masterly turn from cowed acolyte to fearless artistic equal. Race while you still can to see Logan’s glimpse behind the tortuous artistic process alongside Rothko’s glowing achievement. Visit: www.GoodmanTheatre.org.

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