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Cy Twombly in Los Angeles: Cheeky, challenging, classical
NEW YORK, NY.- Has anyone noticed that Cy Twombly is funny? Like his critics, he acted so self-serious: What I am trying to establish is that Modern Art is not dislocated, but something with roots, tradition and continuity, he wrote in his 1952 fellowship application to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Well, the centerpiece of Cy Twombly: Making Past Present at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, a cheeky and challenging exploration of his lifelong obsession with art and poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, is a hurricane of penises. Stare long enough at Leda and the Swan (1962), and from its vortex of abstract spokes and squelches youll notice a cartoon phallus leaping forth in lipstick-red. There goes another in sour cream. Another in graphite. Leonardo, Michelangelo and CÃ©zanne all tried the subject: Disguised as an elegant bird, ... More

An artist embodies an approach to music without borders
NEW YORK, NY.- On a recent afternoon at David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonics violins began to play an ensemble pizzicato pattern underneath a turntable-scratch solo by the artist DJ Logic. I couldnt help but smile. That gratifying moment hit during jazz trumpeter Etienne Charles San Juan Hill, which Lincoln Center commissioned for the Philharmonic. It was a musical fusion, executed surprisingly well in a surprising space. But while it may have been unusual for Lincoln Center, it isnt a shock for New York as a whole. In between Charles new piece and the Philharmonics 1997 performance of Skies of America a collaboration with composer-saxophonist Ornette Coleman and his Prime Time ensemble a broad artistic network has cleared fresh paths for American composers, ones in which varied stylistic languages ... More

Review: In 'Topdog/Underdog,' staying alive Is the ultimate hustle
NEW YORK, NY.- Among the most thrilling and jarring gambits in modern theater, up there with the nattering woman half-buried in sand at the top of Samuel Becketts Happy Days, is the scene that opens Suzan-Lori Parks Topdog/Underdog with a bang. In a seedy rooming house apartment, as one man rehearses his three-card monte spiel watch me close, watch me close now Abraham Lincoln arrives with Chinese takeout. But watch Parks, too. Her skittering silverfish of a play, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2002, glints with meaning that refuses to stay put. Although this Lincoln, like the one hes named for, wears the requisite frock coat and stovepipe hat, we see at once that hes a Black man in whiteface, and soon learn that he earns $314 a week for letting customers at an arcade pretend to shoot him. The spieler is his brother, Booth, whose ... More

A shrinking town at the center of France's culture wars
CALLAC.- A shrinking town set among cow pastures in Brittany seems an unlikely setting for Frances soul searching over immigration and identity. The main square is named after the date in 1944 that local resistance fighters were rounded up by Nazi soldiers, many never seen again. It offers a cafe run by a social club, a museum dedicated to the Brittany spaniel and a hefty serving of rural flight forlorn empty buildings, their grills pulled down and windows shuttered, some for decades. So when town council members heard of a program that could renovate the dilapidated buildings and fill much-needed jobs such as nurses aides and builders by bringing in skilled refugees, it seemed like a winning lottery ticket. It hit me like lightning, said Laure-Line Inderbitzin, a deputy mayor. It sees refugees not as charity, but an opportunity. ... More

wani toaishara wins the 2022 Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award
QUEENSLAND.- Contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts has announced wani toaishara as the winner of the 2022 Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award. One of Australias most significant awards for contemporary photographic practice, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award provides a national platform for emerging and established artists working in the broad medium of contemporary photography. wani toaishara has been awarded the $25,000 acquisitive award, the richest prize for photography in Queensland, for his work do black boys go to heaven. toaishara's practice, based in videography and performance, responds to African affairs and visual culture while interrogating dislocation for those on the margins. Recently incorporating photography into his practice, the ... More

"The Chapel" funeral tomb designed by BERGER+PARKKINEN
VIENNA.- Designing a funeral chapel is not the everyday business of an architect. All the more curiosity and creative interest was triggered by the commission from a family in Styria to the Austrian-Finnish architecture practice BERGER+PARKKINEN. An inspiring, atypical and particularly exciting task, also because it was "a building, freed from compromising functions," as architect Alfred Berger puts it. Adolf Loos wrote very appropriately in "Ornament and Crime" in 1908: "Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: The tomb and the monument. Everything else, everything that serves a purpose, is to be excluded from the realm of art." "So we were dealing with a borderline area of architecture, an area where otherwise determining themes such as function have little influence on the design. It was therefore necessary to find a new approach, ... More

From Body to Horizon: An exhibition of paintings by queer artists opens at LGDR
NEW YORK, NY.- LGDR began on October 20th their presentation of From Body to Horizon, an exhibition of paintings by queer artists who have developed specific approaches to color through depictions of the interior and exterior landscapes of their own lives. Occupying the first floor of the gallerys 909 Madison Avenue location, the show will feature works by Etel Adnan, David Hockney, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, and Doron Langberg. Pushing beyond the conventions of naturalism, each of these four artists has developed a signature approach to color as a languagea means for reflecting upon topographies both figural and panoramic, domestic and picturesque, intimate and universal. The exhibition is anchored by David Hockneys large-scale diptych Double East Yorkshire (1998), one of six early canvases the artist painted of Yorkshire between ... More

Gordon Parks' Segregation Story Expanded Edition released earlier this month
PLEASANTVILLE, NY.- This new edition of Gordon Parks' Segregation Story includes several never-before-published photographs, as well as enhanced reproductions created from Parks original transparencies. A selection of 26 images from Segregation Story first appeared in the September 24, 1956 issue of Life magazine as part of the photo-essay The Restraints: Open and Hidden. Although some of these were exhibited during his lifetime, the bulk of Parks assignment was thought lost. In 2011, five years after Parks death, The Gordon Parks Foundation discovered more than 70 color transparencies from the series. Revising the original book published by Steidl in 2014, this expanded edition is the most comprehensive publication of this pivotal body of work to date. In the summer following the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, ... More

Simon Foxall: Self Portrait as a Thumb in a Storm now on show at the Alchemy Gallery
NEW YORK, NY.- Alchemy Gallery began the presentation the first U.S. exhibition of Italy-based artist Simon Foxall, on October 20th. Titled Self Portrait as a Thumb in a Storm, the show includes a collection of paintings by the UK-raised artist featuring a dynamic and compelling cast of characters. Foxalls work explores a unique dichotomy between old world art, and contemporary culture. Heavily influenced by the intricately elaborate imagery of medieval and gothic genres, Foxall seeks to create similar escapist portals with his small-scale paintings. Featuring contemporary iconography inspired by pop culture, the series of 15 works include everything from drag queens, fetish-wear, cowboys and Monty Python. Each piece is small and intimate in size (no larger than 45 x 55cm) which is in direct contrast to their expansive vision, compelling ... More

Solo exhibition A L E P H at the Fred & Ferry Gallery recently opened in Antwerp
ANTWERP.- Fred & Ferry are currently presenting | A L E P H |, a solo exhibition by artist Maxime Brigou, who made a whole new body of work in the last couple of months to present for the gallery which will continue through to November 12th, 2022. The artist is most known for her wall sculptures; frames that seem to pull you into an other universe. Now her sculptures begin to break free again, emerging from her frames. Where do they find these lines in nature? Personally, I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not, planes that advance and planes that recede, relief and depth. My eye never sees lines or details. These overheard words by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya echo his artistic attitude: he wanted to capture life in its ever-moving whole, beyond concrete objects or superficial parts. Reality may have unfolded too quickly, too abruptly ... More

Mettere al Mondo il Mondo, curated by Mark Godfrey, on view at the Thomas Dane Galery
NAPLES.- Mettere al Mondo il Mondo which is curated by Mark Godfrey and has been on view since the begining of the month at the Thomas Dane Gallery, will continue through to December 23, 2022. In 1971, Alighiero Boetti began to use the phrase Mettere al mondo il mondo. One translation is giving birth to the world, but another more prosaic translation is putting the world back into the world which implies a way of making art that Boetti followed. Instead of inventing images, constructing forms, or having things fabricated, Boetti took the stuff of the world, rearranged it, and put it back into the world as art. He used stamps, maps, the names and lengths of rivers, the colours of biro pens. Boettis idea of putting the world back into the world is one approach among the many that artists take when transforming used objects, and this exhibition explores the different reasons they do this. In ... More