Archive for August, 2011
The Writing Window
by Adam Leipzig
I have writer friends who tell me they only get real writing done when they go on writing retreats, and hole up for a month at a time. There’s something about the change of scene and place that makes work better, they say, or at least flow more easily.
We came up to Mendocino because Lori was taking a class at the Art Center here, and I t More...
In Anna Deavere Smith’s Theatre, Grace, Down Easy
by Leeza Watstein Mota
Like a doctor of Chinese medicine, Anna Deavere Smith takes the pulse on our ailing society in regards to matters of life and death and healthcare in Let Me Down Easy (playing through the weekend at the Berkeley Rep, and airing on PBS next year). “How do you want to die?,” Smith prompts us to examine. In the end, we are exhausted, all u More...
Boogie Street: Leonard Cohen Revisited
by Guy Zimmerman | Times Quotidian
I remember lying around in the living room of the house on West 3rd Street in Lexington, Kentucky where the phonograph, the record player, commanded the space below the windows that looked out toward the holly tree. I remember the album covers stacked beside the speakers – 12×5 by the Rolling Stones, The Beatles’ Abbey Road, The Freewheeli More...
Do Museums Love Themselves More Than They Love Art?
by Edward Goldman | Art Talk
One of the most despicable things that can happen to a great work art — beyond destruction caused by some terrible calamity — is to be willfully cut in pieces for the greedy purpose of making more money through multiple sales. An example of such a disgraceful, greedy action happened to the remarkable group portrait by Frans Hals, More...
“Los Angeles Plays Itself,” 3
by John Bailey
“The best films about Los Angeles are, at least partly, about modes of transportation. Getting from place to place isn’t a given. Cars break down; they get flat tires; they get towed.” Thom Andersen’s narration of the trials of Chinatown’s Jake Gittes, a man without wheels after his car crashes head-on into a tree while bein More...
Barbarians in the Ivory Tower: American Writing Lives
by Ulli K. Ryder
Joseph Epstein’s recent essay “What Killed American Lit.” in the Wall Street Journal purports to be a review of The Cambridge History of American Literature, but Epstein turns it into his soapbox and begins with a false premise – that American literature is dead and no one wants to read it anymore. I am a former English major and curr More...
Artist Circles the Chinese Zodiac
by Edward Goldman | Art Talk
In the last decade, the name of Chinese sculptor Ai Weiwei has become known not only to the art connoisseurs but to a wide public as well. And it has happened both for the right and wrong reasons. Ai Weiwei became a household name during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, as artistic collaborator on the design for the splendid "Bird's Nest," the N More...
With Musical Model, Arts May Avoid Strip Mall
by Diane Ragsdale | Jumper
This past week I came across a New York Times article featured on ArtsJournal examining the remarkable success of the indie Jazz label, Pi. The article demonstrates that Pi is bucking trends in the music industry. It is managing to not just keep its head above water at a time when many music labels are struggling, but it is having tre More...
“Los Angeles Plays Itself,” 2
by John Bailey
America’s greatest cities often have monikers: “The Big Apple,” “Mile High City,” “Baghdad by the Bay,” “Big D,” “The Windy City,” “Gateway to the West,” “The Big Easy.” Most of these are booster-ish. And what about Los Angeles? “LaLa Land,” “Lotus Land,” “Tinseltown,”(allowing for the cit More...
