Tag: 06.26.17

Painter Ed Mieczkowski, Pioneer Of Op Art Movement, Dead At 87

“[He] was part of a circle of mid-century geometric abstractionists active in Ohio that included Julian Stanczak … Like Stanczak, Mieczkowski participated in the pivotal 1965 exhibition ‘The Responsive Eye’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which launched Op Art. Mieczkowski co-founded the Anonima group in 1960 in Cleveland with painters Ernst Benkert and Francis Hewitt.”

When A Critic Reviews Dance Outside Of Her Own Culture (What Could Go Wrong?)

What deserves interrogation is not the question of whether or not to move beyond “tradition.” It is the rhetorical use of the term “tradition” and the presumption of an uninformed critic to police black choreographers’ prerogatives. When will we be done with these tired tropes of authenticity and “tradition” that continue to plague contemporary black performance?

Does Engaging In The Arts Even Matter?

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans generated much of their own art by themselves and at home, through playing parlor piano, reciting Shakespeare around the dinner table, and other exercises in Emersonian self-reliance. All that changed with the introduction of radio, sound recordings, movie theaters, and other forms of industrially produced mass entertainment. The audience’s role increasingly was reduced to coming to a large venue, sitting in a darkened room, then applauding on cue.

Is The Decline Of Old-Style Rep Theatres Really Such A Terrible Thing?

Lyn Gardner: “It’s not surprising that there is a great deal of nostalgia from actors such as Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Simon Callow who were the beneficiaries of the old rep system. But the purpose of contemporary theatre is not just to train the stars and Dames and Knights of the future. It is there to serve a much wider community … and most of all it is there to serve the particular and unique needs of the locale where a theatre is situated.” (What’s more, “from where I sit in aisle seats across the country the standard of British acting gets better year by year.”)

A Call For ‘Less Biased’ Theatre Criticism Resounds In The Theatrical Community

There’s a lot more to say about the way Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel, and many other playwrights, get treated by an East Coast theatre establishment. “We know that the tension between minority playwrights and critics is not a new problem. It’s a very old problem, one made newly urgent by biased reviews of productions by women and playmakers of color this season.”

The Way The Biscuit Crumbles: A British Journalist Explores ‘Semantic Colonialism’

Sure, “the wonderful thing about the English language is its sponge-like ability to absorb, use and discard un-English verbiage and still be vitally itself.” But wait! Americanisms invading British English means “Britain, and young Britain in particular, has handed over ‘control of its culture and vocabulary to Washington, New York and Los Angeles.’ It is, Engel argues, ‘self-imposed serfdom.'”