Calder, Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome), until February 14th, by Daniel Gallagher

Alexander Calder, Red Panel

Alexander Calder, Red Panel

Alexander Calder’s (1898-1976) acceptance of the prize for sculpture at the XXVI Venice Biennale in 1952 forged a bond of friendship with a country he had admired for some time. He was especially close to art connoisseur Giovanni Carandente, who sadly passed away last June 7th while working furiously on the catalogue for this exhibit. Carandente is largely to thank for introducing Italy to the radical idea that art could break forth from closed frames into three-dimensional space and engage the surrounding environment by contrast and analogy. Carandente’s keen interest in urban sculpture boded well for Calder, whose “Teodelapio” (1962) outside the Spoleto train station ignited a passion for public art in Italy that endures even today. His friendship with Carandente expanded the possibilities for his prodigious output, leading him to design several opera sets for theatres across Italy. Although Calder declined the Medal of Freedom offered him by President Gerald Ford on political grounds, he went on to accept several degrees honoris causa from prestigious Italian universities.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review for the Arts

A New Acquisition for the Clark: Théodore Rousseau’s La Ferme dans les Landes

Théodore Rousseau's La Ferme dans les Landes - La maison du Garde, oil on canvas, Sterling and Francne Clark Art Institute

Théodore Rousseau's La Ferme dans les Landes - La Maison du Garde, oil on canvas, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

At a time when many institutions are seriously discussing deaccessioning and other radical means of keeping afloat, the Clark can boast of a fascinating new acquisition, Théodore Rousseau's La Ferme dans les Landes - La Maison du Garde (oil on canvas, 64.5 x 99.1 cm; 25.4 x 39 in.). While the Clark has several charming small works from the Barbizon School, it has been on the lookout for a major, representative painting, and when it appeared with the Matthiesen Gallery, first at Maastricht and later in their London galleries, the museum took steps to acquire it.

This heavily worked landscape had a most curious genesis—which was nonetheless characteristic of the artist. Rousseau had a penchant for plein-air painting from an early age, and he became known as one of its luminaries, but he firmly, even obsessively believed that the height of art was a laborious perfection achieved over many years. He once said that "A man should be bold enough, faithful enough, rich enough, to produce only one prodigious work; so that this work should be a masterpiece."

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts.

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

tel. 413.458.2244

Visit our new social network, Berkshire Artsnet: http://berkshireartsnet.ning.com.





Beethoven at 8,000 Feet: David Finckel and Wu Han's ArtistLed Recording of Beethoven's Cello Sonatas and Variations

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With David Finckel and Wu Han's program of Beethoven Cello Sonatas at Union College coming up, I thought it a good idea to take a look at their recording of Beethoven's complete Cello works, which I'd never heard before. I was even surprised to learn that it dates back to 1997, making it one of, making it one of the earliest recordings they made on their pioneering label, ArtistLed.
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Barrington Stage Company (Julianne Boyd, Artistic Director, and Richard M. Parison, Jr., Producing Director) has announced its extended 2010 Season.

Barrington Stage Company (Julianne Boyd, Artistic Director, and Richard M. Parison, Jr., Producing Director) has announced its extended 2010 Season.

On the Mainstage:

Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Yasmina Reza's Art

Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular

Stage 2:

The New England premiere of The Whipping Man

Musical Theatre Lab on Stage 2 to present two new musicals including the World Premiere of Pool Boy

Youth Theatre to present Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into The Woods

Fall Mainstage production: Arthur Miller's The Crucible
Holiday Mainstage production: A Christmas Story

Read the full preview on the Berkshire Review for the Arts

Shakespeare & Company announces its major summer productions for 2010.

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A few names are enough to generate quite a lot of enthusiasm for Shakespeare & Company's mainstage offerings for the summer of 2010: Richard III, John Douglas Thompson, Hermione, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, and of course Tina Packer and Dennis Krausnick, at the very least.

Read the full preview on The Berkshire Review for the Arts.

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

tel. 413.458.2244

Visit our new social network, Berkshire Artsnet: http://berkshireartsnet.ning.com.







György Kepes: a Polaroid and a Reminiscence, by Richard Harrington

György Kepes, With Braille, color Polaroid, 20" x 24", 1984. The Polaroid Collection..

This hypnotic light graphic, which was commissioned by the Polaroid Corporation, was done using a 20" x 24" Land camera.

It illustrates a few intriguing things about color perception in Polaroid technology and Mr. Kepes's unique insight about how to make it effective within his own artistic methods and intentions. If the colors that are being photographed are somewhat achromatic, i.e., neutral, they appear to be more "real", i.e., because the viewer is not searching his color memory to decide whether the colors resemble the vividness of a rose, for example. The gray gridded background, crossword puzzle on paper, ink-on canvas, Braille sample, half-silvered prism, reflections and cast shadows are virtually achromatic, in spite of the fact that this is a color photograph.

Read the full article on The Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Avatar, A 'Papier Mâché Mephistopheles

Avatar

Until reading Manohla Dargis’ review in the New York Times, I had no intention of seeing Avatar. But her article affected me: I felt disturbed and violated. Her opening sentence: ‘With “Avatar” James Cameron has turned one man’s dream of the movies into a trippy joy ride about the end of life – our moviegoing life included – as we know it,’ is why. Those words in parentheses, an obliging repetition of the advertisements, obliterated my initial dismissiveness. So too, did its place as #24 in IMDb’s Top 200 List (well ahead of Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard). To say ‘Just another bullshit blockbuster to disregard’ is irresponsible in this case. 20th Century Fox and James Cameron are serious – $280 million is no joke, not even to them (it boasts of being one of the most expensive movies ever made). The aim for the filmmakers of Avatar is to revolutionize cinema through science fiction, to finish what George Lucas and Steven Spielberg began. They are desperate to do so in part because audiences are thinning. People look at their computers – and their even smaller portable gadgets – to watch the latest films, either downloaded through torrents, or streamed through websites. The intention of getting people to the cinema is noble (at least on the surface), but theproduct is decidedly ignoble.

Read the full review on The Berkshire Review for the Arts!

La riscoperta di Dada e Surrealismo—introducing Daniel Gallagher, our new Rome correspondent

Harry Carlsson (Danish, 1891-1968), Le triomphe de l’amour (1936)

After a stroll through the Roman Forum, visitors to the Eternal City these days are just a few steps from one of the most impressive and comprehensive exhibitions of dadaistic and surrealistic art ever realized. Noted art historian and theorist Arturo Schwarz, curator of the exhibition underway at the Vittoriano and once owner of many of its pieces (since donated to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem), has brought together over 500 oil paintings, drawings, sculptures, readymades, collages, assemblages, and photomontages to showcase the enormous variety of twentieth-century avant-gardism. Having befriended André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Man Ray, he knows Dada and Surrealism as well as anyone. In the introductory video to the exhibit, Schwarz explains that his primary goal is to highlight a major difference between Dadaism and Surrealism: while the former openly rejected the past, the latter maintained a keen interest in both ancient (Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles) and modern (Hegel, Freud, and Marx) philosophy. Entitled “La riscoperta di Dada e Surrealismo”, the collection presents both movements as serious cultural and political revolutions rather than merely artistic genres. The title “rediscovery” also refers to the enormous number of artists who worked in the surrealist mode, perhaps the most cosmopolitan of any style in the history of art.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts

Commentary: Here and There… of Anthropology at Home and Abroad

Robert Gardner at Work

The ethnographic films of Robert Gardner and anthropology in general resonate quite powerfully with me, although I've hardly ever had a chance to become broadly or deeply acquainted with either. My first encounter with Gardner's Dead Birds, his best-known work, made a deep impression on me, not only because of the film itself, which was reason enough, but because of the odd circumstances in which I first discovered it.

Read the full article on The Berkshire Review for the Arts.

Christmas, 1559

George Wilson Washington, Gloucester Cathedral, The Choir, Looking East, Albumen Print, 1866.

A hundred small fires light up the close. Animals are everywhere. Sheep cries. At the stroke of the great bell the introit rings out. Rorate coeli desuper. Veni Domine, et noli tardare. Alleluia. This is all most of them will hear. The procession is coming down the close. The costumes struck through and through with gold thread, the books of music full of everlasting beauty, even lapis from the East. This is the color which clothes the Virgin. Light is barely perceptible through the windows. The city of Gloucester leans in on the cathedral like a parent over a child. Those outside attend a rite which they cannot see and cannot hear.

Read the rest on The Berkshire Review for the Arts