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An artist's high-tech dream of a world with no nations
LONDON.- Can art change the world? For all the possible answers to this question, the fact of war seems to sweep it away: Has Guernica ever stopped a bomb? As humanity shambles on, artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas takes up the question again, but from a perverse angle: a tech startup spun off a defeated revolution. Kulendran Thomas video New Eelam traversed the art world in 2016, appearing in showroomlike installations at major biennials. The work tells the story of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant Marxist group in Sri Lanka that, between 1983 and 2009, attempted to build an autonomous community called Eelam in the islands northern jungles. For Kulendran Thomas purposes, a nascent internet helped Tamil Eelam explore nonhierarchical forms of self-government. A flood of Western arms to the Sri Lankan army sealed ... More

Poetry, power and loss in Theaster Gates' survey
NEW YORK, NY.- At the heart of Theaster Gates survey at the New Museum, Young Lords and Their Traces, sits a curious, mummylike object in a vitrine: a boli sculpture a power figure created by Bamana artists in Mali to harness spiritual energy. It was crumbling when the artist acquired it, so he wrapped it in strips of white cloth. This wasnt simply an act of conservation it is linked to how the figure was made by those Bamana artists, who swathed wood in fabric before covering it in clay and other sacrificial materials. The move exemplifies what Gates calls generative care tending to the past by carrying its lessons into the future. It is a notion that seems to inform his whole practice. He rose to fame by reviving a neighborhood in Chicagos South Side, purchasing vacant and distressed properties and transforming them into artist studios, affordable ... More

Étienne Robial retrospective exhibition at the Musée des arts Décoratifs
PARIS.- e musÃ©e des Arts dÃ©coratifs is paying homage to the work of Ãtienne Robial with a retrospective exhibition that started on November 10, 2022 and will continue through to June 11, 2023. Ã©tienne + robial. graphisme & collection, de futuropolis Ã canal+ retraces the exceptional career of this prolific and eclectic creator through works ranging from posters and drawings to videos, books and furniture. Graphic artist, publisher, artistic director, professor and collector, Ãtienne Robial has left a strong mark on the French audiovisual landscape over the past 50 years by creating the concept of habillage audiovisual presentations for television stations such as Canal+ and M6. He co-founded the publishing house Futuropolis, thus contributing to the literary recognition of auteur comic books. He redesigned and created the ... More

Punk rock, Chicano art, music and politics congeal in "Victor Estrada: Purple Mexican"
LOS ANGELES, CALIF.- ArtCenter Exhibitions is now presenting through to February 25th, 2023 Victor Estrada: Purple Mexican, a survey of works by the Los Angeles-based artist, Victor Estrada. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Victor Estrada has produced paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations that deftly navigate the realms of pop and conceptual art. A consummate Angelino, his work is informed by the unique cultural landscape of the sprawling metropolis and the Southwest1980s Los Angeles and South Bay punk rock; Chicano art, music and politics; the art collectives ASCO and Los Four; and the enduring socio-political ramifications surrounding the US/Mexico border. Estrada congeals this and more in his surreal forms, pushing the boundaries of abstraction while also teasing the viewer with eruptions and viscera of his own ... More

'Shucked' is corny. It's country. And it's coming to Broadway.
NEW YORK, NY.- Shucked, a corn-pone musical with roots in country music and rural humor, will arrive on Broadway early next year after more than a decade of starts and stops. The musical, which finds laughs in a worrisome alliance between a hick and a huckster, features a score by a pair of well-regarded Nashville, Tennessee, songwriters: Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. The duo, who have not previously worked on Broadway, have teamed up with a writer who has: Robert Horn, who in 2019 won a Tony Award for writing the stage adaptation of Tootsie and who has also written this musicals book. Shucked has a complicated development history. The three writers first collaborated on a musical called Moonshine, which was based on Hee Haw, a long-running country-and-comedy variety show that first aired on television in ... More

Examining the regrettably modern marriage of Leo Tolstoy and Sophia Tolstaya
NEW YORK, NY.- I work without respite, Sophia Tolstaya says in Frederick Wisemans A Couple. I suffer from the impossibility of achieving what I want to do. Living with Leo Tolstoy who wrote his greatest works, including Anna Karenina and War and Peace, during their 1862-1910 marriage is no picnic, and Tolstayas reflections can sound very recognizable to a modern ear. She cant get everything done and feels constantly guilty about that, yet endures a husband who neither shares the family burdens fairly nor recognizes her full self. Married at 18, she helped run a 4,000-acre estate, raised and educated their children (eight of 13 survived to adulthood), and copied and revised hundreds of pages of Tolstoys manuscripts (as well as writing her own). The contemporary resonance appealed to Wiseman, better known for his 43 ... More

Heritage Auctions opens Forrest Fenn's treasure chest to collectors
DALLAS, TX.- his time, at least, the hunt for Forrest Fenn's treasure won't be so challenging. What remains from that famed chest hidden in the Rocky Mountains for a decade, the stuff of dreams and countless news stories is now available with the simple click of a button. On Friday Heritage Auctions opened bidding on Forrest Fenn's Treasure, which closes Dec. 12. The thrill of the chase is prolonged another month as collectors once again vie for 476 gold pieces, coins, jewelry and other items found in the chest that was planted in 2010 by the author, decorated fighter pilot and art dealer. Fenn, a native of Temple, Texas, saw the treasure hunt as a fitting farewell to a life well lived and, he said, as a way to encourage people "to get off their couches." Before and even after the chest's discovery in 2020 by Jack Stuef, Fenn's story became ... More

Prized private collections shine at Heritage HKINF World & Ancient Coins Auction
DALLAS, TX.- Three exceptional collections, encompassing provincial and the Republic of China, stand poised to help Heritage Auctions' Dec. 7-9 World & Ancient Coins Platinum Session and SignatureÂ® Auction continue the growth that has surged throughout the year. The event features the Tony Ma, Glorium and Monrovia collections each of which spotlights each collector's shrewd eye for quality and aesthetics of China's most challenging series. "These collections are among the most significant and important collections of Chinese coins anywhere," says Cris Bierrenbach, Executive Vice President of International Numismatics at Heritage Auctions. "As the market for modern Chinese rarities continues to expand, so does our selection of this material, which extends from the earliest issues in 1979 to the most modern contemporary show pandas." ... More

For Elvis Mitchell, critic turned filmmaker, a chance to show and tell
NEW YORK, NY.- Elvis Mitchell has spent much of his life thinking, writing and talking about movies, but the release of his own debut film is taking some time to sink in. I made this thing, and there are people in that room watching it right now, he said, a little awestruck, during a screening last month of the documentary Is That Black Enough for You?!?, which Mitchell directed, wrote and executive produced. I dont know how to think about that. This still feels so close to me. The movie a personal account of a pivotal era of Black film in the late 60s and 70s is a long time coming. Weaving together more than 100 clips of indelible classics (Night of the Living Dead, Lady Sings the Blues) and unheralded gems (Uptight, Abar), its based on decades of Mitchells observations as a cinephile, scholar and critic, including for The New York Times (he left in 2004) and Los Angeles pu ... More