For great fun, and a breathless romp through one woman’s topsy-turvy life, Bad Dates , George Street Playhouses’ filmed version of Theresa Rebeck’s 2003 zany one-woman play starring Broadway actress Andréa Burns ( In The Heights, On Your Feet, The Nance ), is the hip place to be.
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Recently published, Palm Beach Panache, by inveterate design fashionista, Carolina (pronounced, Caro-lee-na) Fernandez, plunges headlong into a world few get to see. Behind the gates and curving drives leading up to those fine homes bordering the ubiquitous Florida inter-coastal waterways, there are treasures of design and good taste meant for only the most discerning eye. But, Fernandez has managed to pierce the coveted privacy veil, inviting her readers into those hallowed realms with dozens of beautiful photographs and her probing narrative style. Inspired by her own investment in Sunshine State property, as well as shaping attractive living environments for her own family, based in New England, the author ventured into the Palm Beach community to learn about and share her observations of the unique, ‘Palm Beach style.’ xxxxxMore
Food and—more specifically—its consumption are intimately linked to our identity as social beings, anchoring us together as families, communities and nations. Wolves consume calories the same way each time, hurriedly to avoid losing their kill to another. For creatures of the wild, swallowing trumps savoring every time. Not so with the human species. We suspend food on our tongues, rolling our eyes with delight with each bite. Chewing releases vital flavors as taste buds and the brain’s sensory and memory centers revel in the experience.
Left: Tarentine Red Figure, Bull’s Head Rython, Apulia, Italy (ca. 350-320 BCE)
Only our most primitive Paleolithic ancestors likely consumed their food without cooking it. Once fire was discovered as a means of enhancing mastication and digestion, it was a short step to specialty meal preparation. The regionalization of herb and spice enhancements, grain and vegetation cultivation soon demarcated one tribe from another, one culture’s culinary traditions from that of their neighbors. Given our rapidly-evolving omnivorous propensity, gourmet kitchens became a Darwinian evolutionary inevitability! xxxxxxMore
Divided Voices at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore is a notable effort to provide a narrative of the American Civil War as it was experienced in Maryland. This exhibition is well worth a visit by anyone interested in American history and culture—or, for that matter, interested in contemporary American life. The exhibition is instructive both for what it has achieved and what it has not achieved. For the thoughtful visitor, Divided Voices is likely to evoke meaningful reflection on one of the seminal events of our national story and on our response to that event 150 years later.
Left: Tattered battle flag of the 4th Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops- part of the ‘Divided Voices’ exhibition. artes fine arts magazineMore
“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.” ~Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
“The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.” ~ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.” ~ Jules Verne , 20,000 Leagues under the Sea
Imagine, if you can, that your destination is a leviathan labyrinth, teeming with “never-before-seen” but now, “never-to-be forgotten”, vegetation, organisms and sea creatures, all thriving in abyssal sea vents, assuming a palette of cool, delicate gray and browns, juxtaposed with ochre, hot pink, red and oranges.
Experiencing Beyond the Edge of the Sea is to embark on that deep ocean adventure –the thrill of the aqua-blue-through-black descent and search, primordial discoveries, and finally, the artful, intelligently-rendered seascapes that dramatically animate the voyage. artes fine arts magazineMore
In 1644, just 24 years after the English Pilgrims arrived on what is today the Massachusetts coast of the United States, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was overthrown by the Manchu, a people from the north who were not Han Chinese. The subsequent establishment of the Qing (pronounced “ching”) Dynasty (1644-1911) signaled the end of Han rule and the installation of foreign rulers in the imperial palace complex, also known as the ‘Forbidden City,’ in Beijing.
Despite their non-Han origins, however, the Qing produced two of the greatest imperial patrons of art in China’s long history: the Kangxi (pronounced “kang-shee”) and the Qianlong (pronounced “chee’en-long”) emperors, the grandfather and grandson who ruled from 1662 to 1722 and from 1736 to 1799, respectively. fine arts magazineMore
In late December 2007, three small cardboard boxes arrived at the International Center of Photography (ICP) from Mexico City after a long and mysterious journey. These tattered boxes—the so-called Mexican Suitcase—contained the legendary Spanish Civil War negatives of Robert Capa. Rumors had circulated for years of the survival of the negatives, which had disappeared from Capa’s Paris studio at the beginning of World War II.
Left: Robert Capa, Exiled Republicans marched down beach to internment camp, Le Barcarès, France (March, 1939), Negative, © International Center of Photography / Magnum, Coll., ICP. More
‘The richness of textile traditions link people the world over, for fabrics are a non-verbal language that tell us the cultural history of a people, their place in the world and even their beliefs.’ (Dhamija 2006:266).
Meaning is encoded in cultural objects in many different ways and is never static. Objects continuously travel in and out of categories of meaning, particularly when the objects themselves also travel physically. Trade goods are the focus of this research paper, which will examine the Dr. Thomas J. Hudak collection of textiles, purchased in Indonesia. The textiles in Dr. Hudak’s collection resemble the Indian textiles found at the center of enormous trade markets in the 1600s. Dr. Hudak’s stunning collection was on display at the Arizona State University Museum of Anthropology in 2010 as part of the exhibit, Trading Cloth and Culture. Examined through the four themes of Technique, Trade, Aesthetics, and Cultural Significance, the textiles in this collection present us with the opportunity to study the nature of objects that have traveled great distances. “Textiles are an important medium in cultural studies because of their universality and mobility. They circulate within specific cultural milieus and also serve as a vehicle for the transmission of ideas between cultures” (Guy 1998:7). From Dr. Hudak’s collection, we can see the ways in which objects are given meaning and how these meanings constantly shift and evolve.
Above: Weaver in Mahasarakham Province, Northeast Thailand. photo by H.Leedom Lefforts fine arts magazineMore
A visit to New York’s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Old Masters Collection, provides the interested viewer with an opportunity to look closely at pictures painted on wooden panel, canvas, and occasionally, stone or metal. Here, we will refer to their collection and concentrate on the materials, techniques and physical history of European works from north of the Alps, with an eventual detour to Italy, which will be the subject of Part II of this article. The paintings being considered during the 15th-17th century belong to the genre now classified as “easel paintings” – rectangular in format, enclosed in a frame, and intended to hang or stand upright. Some of the very smallest pictures, especially those with a religious subject, might have been kept in a special box with other treasures. Other small pictures were originally diptychs or triptychs: two or three panels hinged together that could stand open during personal devotion and then be folded for transport or storage. Larger pictures, now all too often framed and presented in museums as separate entities, frequently belonged to multi-part structures – usually three parts or more (the latter referred to as polyptychs) – which functioned as altarpieces placed on or above church altars. Increasingly, as the Renaissance progressed, painters produced paintings with secular themes in single-field format, which also became the preferred form for religious pictures.More
Seeing the known anew is the grace of every great exhibition. In front of The Adoration of the Magi, by Michael Damaskenos at “The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete,” at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York City, this belief strikes a particularly strong note. Painted in 1585-91, the sensation is of standing in front of the work of a contemporary young painter, fresh, a little cocky, defiantly regaling against the trend in a white box Chelsea gallery. A postmodern mash-up of Byzantine, Renaissance, Gothic and Mannerist styles, it appears so modern as to have been painted in this moment, yet sits entirely in its own time. With a central figure that seems to be a true portrait, a fashionable celebrity magus with courtly crew in tow, he stares frankly and directly out at us from dead center in the picture plane, the antithesis of the symbolic iconographic tradition. He seems to break through the “fourth wall,” caught by the camera’s eye and catching ours in a winking moment while his cast of characters goes on about their business, feverishly unaware.More
