Author: rakemag

Those who regret missing George Morrison’s drawings at Todd Bockley last winter can more than make up for it with this exhibition. Though the museum points out that this exhibit is not a retrospective, it is, in fact, a decent overview of Morrison’s career from the 1940s to the 80s—effective but not overwhelming. Included are life studies from the 40s and 50s, Abstract Expressionist-inspired paintings from the 50s and 60s, and a lovely 1976 example of Morrison’s “paintings in wood” made from driftwood. There’s also a series rendering the same view overlooking Lake Superior from his studio at different times of day, a project that recalls Monet’s late series of haystacks and the Rouen Cathedral; and, finally, a selection of Morrison’s thrillingly intricate line drawings. 651-266-1030; www.mmaa.org

Broader even than “pop culture,” the theme of this show seems so all-encompassing as to be almost pointless (or, at least, to invite too much esoteric theory for our tastes). The good news is that the show itself is elegantly sparse and impressively installed, showcasing several works each from three artists, who’ve shown mostly at hip, cutting-edge galleries on the coasts, but also locally at the Soap Factory and Midway Contemporary Art. In the middle of the gallery is Jay Heikes’ grid of acoustic-tile ceiling hanging from—and doing insult to—the gallery’s own lofty white beams. This cheap slab of ordinariness plays nicely off Rodney McMillian’s huge sheet of vinyl flooring, whose pattern is a grid of imitation stone tiles; presumably lifted from a dilapidated home, it is hung as a sort of imitation painting. Meanwhile, Adam Helms’ grid of forty-eight “portraits”—black masks, hoods, and kerchiefs, rendered in ink on mylar—points to his interest in the “ordinary culture” of rogues, renegades, and outlaws. 612-375-7622; www.walkerart.org

Hand it to Coen + Partners for establishing this gallery as an adjunct to its offices; by doing so, this landscape architecture firm has been admirably carrying on—if not reviving—the gallery tradition within the legendary Wyman Building, featuring both local artists and guest curators. Incidental brings together a quintet of artists whose work, according to curator Michael Fallon, is “not about anything in particular, but happens to be about everything at once.” Among them are the gum-obsessed Andy Powell, whose paintings, with titles like Bubblishous and Little Big Red, include chewed-up wads that transcend grossness to look playful and even sensuous; and Alexis Kuhr, who pencils delicate patterns, evocative of eyeball, headphones, and chain-link fencing, onto oil backgrounds. 400 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-332-5252; www.galleryco.net

The tiniest detail, one that would seem perfectly innocuous in another context, can in this exhibit bring to bear the full horror of the Holocaust. Take, for example, a picture of some children on an outing. In the front row, a girl called Celina Cedarbaum appears to be caught in a merry moment, turning her head to laugh with a friend. In fact, the five-year-old had been trained to obscure her face whenever confronted by a camera—someone, out of kindness, had made this child understand that she would die if she were identified in a photograph. Life in Shadows is made up of such details: tiny toy soldiers stored in a pillbox, a drawing of a farmer, diary pages, and other artifacts from the few thousand Jewish children who went into hiding in their attempts, which were not always successful, to elude the Nazis. 651-296-6126; www.minnesotahistorycenter.org

Jane Hamilton has been blessed or cursed—take your pick—by not one but two bolts of Oprah’s lightning. Having her novels The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World chosen for the distaff Midas’ book club elevated Hamilton to the rarefied ranks of best-selling literary authors and guaranteed her books ample display space in stores until the end of her days. You’d think such success might stifle a writer, or at the very least make her cautious. Yet Hamilton keeps producing novels of disturbing domestic complexity, loaded with echoes from classic literature. When Madeline Was Young is a family saga that spans six decades and revolves around a brain-damaged woman who is living with her ex-husband, his new wife, and the couple’s children. With its gothic undertones, wide-ranging themes, and moral concerns, Madeline appears certain to provide hearty new fodder for book clubbers everywhere.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s one of those virtuous full-immersion journalists whose work inspires more admiration than envy. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), in which she recounted working within America’s hardscrabble underworld of hand-to-mouth laborers, was an eye-opening, compassionate, frequently funny, and dispiriting piece of reportage. It was also an unlikely success story, a book about class that sold more than a million copies and established its author as a celebrity. In her followup, Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich once again went undercover, this time attempting to land a mid-level job in corporate America; it is in many ways an even more depressing book. With forty-four percent of the country’s long-term unemployed coming from the white-collar ranks, Ehrenreich has zero luck in her job search, which unfortunately makes for a sort of anti-climax. Dog eat dog, not surprisingly, is a pretty ugly business all around. 810 31st St. W., Minneapolis; 612-825-3019; www.lyndaleuss.org

After a six-year hiatus, David Treuer (Little and The Hiawatha) returns with a pair of titles that make an audacious claim for a prominent place among Native American writers. An Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation, Treuer teaches English at the University of Minnesota, but his focus remains on the history and current plight of Indians. Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual takes a rigorous and occasionally controversial look at the work of some of the biggest names in the field—which makes the simultaneous release of Treuer’s new novel a pretty gutsy move on his part. With A User’s Manual he throws down the gauntlet, and with The Translation of Dr Apelles—a love story within a love story—he steps directly into potential crossfire from critics armed with his own bullet points. 612-625-6000; www.bookstore.umn.edu

“Astonishing” doesn’t begin to describe the achievement of Octavian Nothing, which is ostensibly, purportedly, and quite incredibly being marketed as a young-adult novel. The latest from M.T. Anderson, whose previous novel Feed was a National Book Award finalist, is as challenging, brilliant, technically ambitious—and, let’s not forget, jaw-droppingly good—as any book you’ll get your hands on this year. God knows what some fifteen-year-old will make of Anderson’s novel, which is chock-full of startling images, big words, and even bigger questions, but it’ll likely boggle the mind of any reader. Told in what feels like pitch-perfect eighteenth-century prose and set against the tumult of Revolutionary War-era Boston, the plot of Octavian Nothing beggars description. Read it, though, for the pure pleasure of experiencing an incredible imagination at work. If this is the sort of thing teenagers are reading today, well, damn if that isn’t some kind of good news for all of us.

It seems impossible that Cormac McCarthy published his first book more than forty years ago. And even after ten novels, there may be no other American writer who has forged such an inimitable style (even if the Faulkner influence has always been apparent) and honed it to such a spare, violent vision of American history and myth. Even when he seemed to be working on a sort of auto-pilot in No Country for Old Men, his last novel, McCarthy was still capable of writing dark, tight rings around most of the competition. He’s been hurtling toward the apocalypse almost from the beginning of his career, and in The Road he finally gets there. A short, grim kick in the teeth, The Road finds McCarthy back in the terrifying, biblical, hair-shirt-wearing (and hair-raising) territory of Blood Meridian.

BReaders captivated by Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones’ 1992 collection of spare, mostly contemporary stories of life in some of the bleakest neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., had to wait more than ten years for a followup. While The Known World could hardly be called a disappointment—it did garner Jones the Pulitzer Prize—as a fat historical novel, it was, nonetheless, a spectacular departure. Now, with All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Jones returns to his native city and the experiences of its African-American residents over a broad swath of the twentieth century. He’s a master at cementing characters with sparse, telling details and life-changing moments. Four of the fourteen stories here originally appeared in the New Yorker, providing readers with a small taste of the pleasures offered by this collection.