Category: AJBlogs

Most Paul Gauguin exhibitions show him off as a sensualist who abandoned his family in France to canoodle with young Tahitian girls. So it was refreshing to see Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey last year at the de Young museum in San Francisco. The exhibit leaves out his most sensualist works and therefore presses visitors to see other aspects of his work. — Judith H. Dobrzynski

“Propwatch always keeps an eye on the drinks cabinet, because liquor is character.” – David Jays

Once again, art-lings, let me offer you my Best Wishes for an Art-Full New Year, along with CultureGrrl’s Top 20 Stories for 2018. And I’ll end this post with a postlude about an issue that I’ve largely ducked this year — the vexing question of whether museums should be “political” and if so, in what ways. — Lee Rosenbaum

Let’s mention just a few recent recordings by Canadians whose work has caught the ears of the Rifftides staff. — Doug Ramsay

For over a year now, I’ve been stewing on and adapting the independent work of E.F. Schumacher and Ken Wilber (citations below), both of whom explore and explain what a “whole” view of ourselves and our world might look like. As I’ve unfolded it (literally) for a few groups and close colleagues, it now seems useful to unfold it for all of you for your reactions. — Andrew Taylor

Identity is the hottest topic in American theater these days, just as immigration is the hottest topic in American politics. But Heather Raffo’s Noura, a drama about a family of Iraqi Catholics who have fled to America, is nothing like the issue-driven, stridently politicized plays about these subjects with which our stages are currently clogged. — Terry Teachout

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” (Mark Twain)
— Doug Ramsay

An excerpt from City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy, my first book, published in 1991. — Terry Teachout

Although I gave Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again (to Mar. 31) a mixed review last week, one focus of the Whitney Museum’s widely praised extravaganza particularly interested me. It’s an aspect that general audiences, who usually pay more attention to the art than the writing on the walls, could easily miss. — Lee Rosenbaum