How sad and impoverished must life be for the anosmiacs among us, those poor wretches who have lost the ability to smell? C’est tragique! as Marcel Proust might say, who also said, “When nothing else remains from the past, friends and things long gone, the odors from their living remain as tiny drops of their … Read more
These two artists (plus Burton Fialk, in the MCP’s Minnesota Projects Gallery) make work about seeing others—in particular, seeing them under duress. Photography lends itself to this, although it’s a use that most of us would not dare undertake. Annabel Clark has documented her mother, Lynn Redgrave, as she endures breast cancer and its treatment … Read more
Jantje Fisscher’s breathtaking constructions really are “drawings in light”: She uses certain plastics to construct light-gathering patterns that take her longtime fascination with natural form and rhythm to new heights. Her work has developed over the years from interesting but relatively dry explorations of pattern to increasingly ecstatic immersion in an expanded idea of the … Read more
In the strange Earrings of Madame de …, a lonely woman, cloistered in an upper-class existence of endless soirées and empty finery, sells the pair of diamond earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day; the unnamed heroine needs spending money to cavort with her long queue of suitors. Oddly enough, the earrings make … Read more
Oh, that Douglas Sirk. The king of suburban ’50s melodrama is being given his due at this year’s Walker Summer Music and Movies program, and it’s about time. In There’s Always Tomorrow, Fred MacMurray—possibly the most underrated actor of his generation—plays a successful family man who is, nevertheless, plagued by disappointment. His wife is focused … Read more
When it all boils down, Vitus is nothing more than a story about a child prodigy who seeks to be a normal boy. But in the hands of director Fredi M. Murer, the simple tale becomes a small but complex masterpiece about the universal difficulties of childhood. Murer, who is unknown in this country but … Read more
This collaboration between writer/director Brad Bird (The Incredibles) and the animation geeks at Pixar takes the medium to new heights. Ratatouille is the simple tale of Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), a rat hiding in the shadows of a famous Parisian restaurant who seeks to become a chef. Like The Incredibles, Ratatouille is a comedy … Read more
Local artist Strassheim is a former forensic photographer who now shoots her own family in disturbing tableaux. Her reputation has been growing ever since her work was featured in the last Whitney Biennial. Small wonder, then, that she has a beautiful show at the Burnet Gallery in the Chambers Hotel—which, of course, has built its … Read more
The Minnesota Orchestra’s concert on July 21 will celebrate the talent of one of its own, the trumpeter and jazz composer Charles Lazarus. Not only will Lazarus play as a soloist, but the program will include a selection of his original compositions, which will be paired with Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s seminal 1861 symphony Night in … Read more
Pablo Picasso: a name that started as a revolution, became mainstream, evolved into a platitude, and ended up as a punch line. He became the repository for everything Europe knew about art, and was the hinge between the School of Paris and the immense gathering energies of the New York School. Every artist in the … Read more