Christina Zwart’s art demands a closer look. A map of the world, on further inspection, turns out to be made from 7,000 condoms; a beautiful rose reveals a photo montage of road kill. Global Protection and Rosekill will be two of her painstakingly pieced-together installations on view at WHOLE (in part) on April 1-May 3 at Boston Sculptors Gallery. We chatted with the Wayland artist about the big picture. // Jacqueline Houton
WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS WAY OF WORKING? I think it comes from a lifetime of needing to line things up and put things in neat rows and patterns. I just like things to be really organized! It’s become a way to have things appear to be one thing from far away and another when viewed up close.
WHERE DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION? Every conversation you have, every lyric you hear to a song, everything you see could be the thing that sparks the piece to turn in a different direction. For instance, I originally had a bunch of different titles for my wage gap piece [23, made from 1,400 doctored dollar bills]. The most recent was from this cartoon I’d seen of a man and a woman heading home at the end of the day. The man’s got his briefcase and he’s hunched forward, and the woman’s behind him, hunched forward. He says, “Another day, another dollar,” and she says, “Another day, another 77 cents.” So, I was going to call it Another Day, Another 77 Cents until…. I was looking at this chart of chromosomes. You’ve got 22 pairs that do whatever, and then the 23rd pair is what distinguishes your gender. You have XX for female or XY for male. And while I was looking at that chart, the number 23 jumped out at me, because that’s exactly the amount that is missing in every dollar bill. It was one of these crazy “eureka” moments.
THAT PIECE WILL HAVE A TIE-IN AT THE RECEPTION, RIGHT? Yes! A couple of my son’s classmates started this company called Sweets for Smiles where they make baked goods for nonprofits. I asked them to provide baked goods for the night of the opening, which is April 11. In return I’d have a little table with a donation box, with their logo and a description of what they do, and a sign that says, “Gender equity baked goods: $1 for men, $0.77 for women.” Nobody likes politics shoved down their throat. I think it’s more interesting and makes more of a point if you can be clever about it. I like to inject humor wherever I can.
Can’t jet off to the Venice Biennale?
Us neither. Fortunately, pioneering video artist Joan Jonas, who’s creating the installations for the U.S. Pavilion at the art world’s biggest biennial bash, is a professor emerita at MIT, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center is treating us to Joan Jonas: Selected Films and Videos, 1972-2005. From April 7 through July 5, the exhibit will showcase seven of the SMFA alum’s film and video works, which tackle femininity, fairy tales, sci-fi and ancient sagas.
Two big exhibits of Japanese art open at the MFA on April 5. Hokusai features more than 200 works by Katsushika Hokusai, including landscapes, witty urban scenes and an early edition ofUnder the Wave Off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), a woodblock print that continues to pop up all over pop culture nearly two centuries after its creation. A different wave prompted the works in In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11, featuring 17 photographers’ responses to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that devastated northeastern Japan in 2011.
Whether they’re printed on T-shirts, projected on buildings or blinking on LED signs, Jenny Holzer’s words can stun like a punch to the gut. The conceptual art heavyweight has unsettled viewers for more than 30 years, starting with works like 20 Inflammatory Essays, a series of provocative 100-word manifestos inspired by the ideologies of figures like Lenin, Hitler and Mao, which she printed on posters and anonymously wheat-pasted across Manhattan, stopping passers-by short with opening lines like “What scares peasants is thinking their bodies will be thrown out in public and left to rot.” Catch that and other major works (including pieces tapping text from U.S. government documents) at Barbara Krakow Gallery, where the Jenny Holzer exhibit is on view through April 25.
The 10-day city-wide Flash Forward Festival closes with a big party on May 3, but the fun doesn’t stop there. For the whole month of May, organizers are letting us get some vitamin D along with our art, bringing outdoor photography exhibits to six shipping containers on the Greenway. Some highlights: Gabriele Galimberti’s Toy Stories, featuring portraits of kids and their prized playthings from India to Iceland; Angélica Dass’Humanæ, which assigns Pantone colors to subjects’ skin tones; and Daesung Lee’s Futuristic Archaeology, a surreal look at the impact of desertification on Mongolia, inspired by museum dioramas.
Thomas Hart Benton was famed for romantic paintings celebrating rural life and the common man, so it might come as a surprise to learn that Tinseltown left a big mark on the Missourian’s work. Opening June 6, American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood explores how stints in the silent film industry lent a cinematic sheen to Benton’s populist paintings, which made him one of America’s most popular artists—till Abstract Expressionist shoved realists out of the spotlight. Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum will host the first major Benton exhibition in a quarter century, showcasing more than 100 works. Meanwhile, over at MassArt, you can hear directly from another artist who knows plenty about Hollywood: Larry Fink, the photographer behind glam books likeThe Vanities: Hollywood Parties 2000-2009, who’ll stop by as part of the Spring Photo Lecture series on April 21.
Spring Loaded
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Rodin and Boston Ballet: Gene Schiavone; Victor Quijada: Michael Slobodian | March 20, 2015
Rubberband Man
Victor Quijada left Los Angeles’ b-boy scene to train with Twyla Tharp and dance with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. He’s since formed his own company, RUBBERBANDance Group, which World Music/CRASHarts brings to the ICA for a genre-bending show on April 10-11. // Sarah Hagman
WHAT WAS IT LIKE MOVING TO BALLET WITHOUT FORMAL TRAINING? I was surrounded by people who graduated from Juilliard, dancers from Sydney Ballet and ABT and New York City Ballet. It just made me want to be as good as them. I guess the competitive nature of hip-hop was driving me. It was one of the toughest things that I ever decided to do…. For a while it meant leaving behind everything that I was good at, the free-styling, the battling, the showing off in hip-hop circles. I was going to start from zero and work my way up.
HOW HAS YOUR BACKGROUND INFLUENCED YOUR CHOREOGRAPHY? I had two separate lives. From 9 am to 6 pm I was in the ballet studio, and from 10 pm to 4 am I was out in the clubs being the person that I knew myself to be. But I had to keep those two things separate. In 2000, hip-hop culture was bubbling [in Montreal]. There had been this sort of b-boy renaissance. I reconnected with all of this, and I felt compelled to bring these two realities together…. When we think of breaking, it’s so spectacular and so many fireworks, but what more could that accomplish? Could that be sensitive, communicative? Could that tell different stories, human stories?
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM EMPIRICAL QUOTIENT? This show is a sum of many different trials and failures, and experiments and experiences. There are six dancers personifying that. The music is an original composition by Jasper Gahunia, who I’ve been working with for the past seven, almost eight years. He has formal training from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto but also was a competitive hip-hop DJ. We’ve taken the hip-hop approach and set it to different genres of music.
Love is in the Air
Two very different takes on romance are taking the stage this spring. First, Saint Petersburg’s Eifman Ballet jetés into the Cutler Majestic Theatre on May 2-3 for Rodin, a retelling of the sculptor’s 15-year relationship with mentee, muse and mistress Camille Claudel. Expect dancers to be sculpted into works of art, appear as cancan performers and play patients in a mental asylum—where the jilted Claudel spent the final three decades of her life.
June brings a less tragic look at love as Boston Conservatory grad Anna Reyes settles into the BCA’s Mills Gallery for a four-week residency to expand on her recent dance film The Good Parts of Being Alive, an exploration of romantic relationships using movement inspired by painter Egon Schiele. On June 26-27, the footage will set the background for performances of the finished product, which Reyes imagines will feature duets playing on a Chinese myth claiming a red thread connects soul mates’ pinkie fingers. #Aww.
Bred in Boston
On April 30-May 10, Boston Ballet brings three contemporary works—all created in Boston—to the Opera House stage in Edge of Vision. Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar’s scores power Hellen Pickett’s reworked Eventide, and Lila York’s Celtsfeatures Irish footwork with music from the Chieftans and Celtic Thunder. Plus, resident choreographer Jorma Elo premieres Bach Cello Suites.
Pop Tracks
Local choreographer Caitlin Corbett’s latest work, smashnightinfinity, draws on everyday life in seven vignettes—“a collection of fully formed half-thoughts”—set to tunes by the Beach Boys, the Grateful Dead and Judy Garland. It’ll join three other pieces, including Flutter (set to Marvin Gaye grooves and made for performers sans dance backgrounds), in New and Recent Work, a program coming to Somerville’s Center for Arts at the Armory on April 3-4.
Firsts and a Last
Celebrity Series brings Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater back to the Citi Wang Theatre on March 26-29 for a number of Boston debuts, including one piece inspired by folk musician Odetta Holmes, plus repertoire mainstays like Duke Ellington tribute Night Creature. It’s also a chance to bid farewell to locally raised-and-trained dancer Kirven Douthit-Boyd, who’ll be moving on to a position with St. Louis’ Center of Creative Arts at the season’s end.
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Eugene Mirman: Brian Tamborello
Burrn Notice
Comedian’s comedian Bill Burr has become a household name with his specials, podcast and acting gigs on shows like Breaking Bad, not to mention his new Netflix animated series due in December. We caught up with the Canton native in advance of Wilbur Week, which will have him performing 15 shows at the Wilbur Theatre on May 9-18. // Meghan Kavanaugh
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE COMING BACK TO BOSTON FROM LOS ANGELES? I just love that part of the country, and I just think everybody back there is so funny individually. There’s so many characters that live back there, so to go back there and be able to make some of the funniest people I’ve ever met laugh is always a special thing.
PACKING A THEATER FOR 10 DAYS DOESN’T HURT EITHER. I’m loving stand-up more than I ever have. It’s the most fun you could ever possibly have for a job. I love it more every single year, and it’s going to be a big thrill for me.
TELL US ABOUT F IS FOR FAMILY. That basically stemmed from telling childhood stories on stage, and whenever I would do it, the only people who would laugh would be other comedians or twisted people in the crowd, so I kind of got frustrated with that and I was thinking…there’s got to be a way to tell these things in a way that I can get people to laugh.… I keep a through line of truth, but also kind of soften it by the fact that it’s a cartoon.
YOU’RE A HELICOPTER PILOT IN YOUR SPARE TIME. WHICH IS SCARIER, FLYING OR STAND-UP? As scary as doing David Letterman or Showtime at the Apollo is, or getting ready to do a scene and it’s Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, there was nothing scarier than looking at that empty seat and realizing that I was flying the damn thing and if something went down, it was on me to get it to the ground. But I gotta tell you, it’s so much fun.
Good Genes
When he’s not lending his voice to Gene on Bob’s Burgers, Eugene Mirman gets his laughs on stage. And April 17-19, his eponymous Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival hits the Shubert Theatre and the Brattle Theatre for six shows, including StarTalk Live! with Bill Nye the Science Guy.
All in the Family
The Belchers are breaking out of the small screen for Bob’s Burgers Live, a nationwide tour stopping by the Orpheum Theatre on March 28, when the Fox cartoon’s voice cast will read scripts, field questions, perform their own stand-up and offer sneak peeks at future episodes.
Feminine Mystique
Seven looks like a lucky number for the Women in Comedy Festival, whose seventh annual installment will feature more than 100 performers at venues throughout town on April 22-26. That includes three marquee headliners: Glee multihyphenate Jane Lynch, comedy icon Lily Tomlinand fast-rising sitcom star/creator Cristela Alonzo.
The Good Doctor
While Broad City star and on-screen dentist Hannibal Buress is known to get into serious shit during his stand-up (this is the man who brought Bill Cosby’s rape allegations front and center, after all), expect him to also riff on the upbeat—pickle juice, anyone?—when he performs five shows at the Wilbur Theatre on April 16-18.
Nothing’s Up
The mundane may be his lifeblood—Seinfeld was a show about nothing, and his Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee web series is just that—but Jerry Seinfeld can still put on a show. His latest international tour stops by the Citi Wang Theatre for two shows on April 10.
Funny Business
Comedy queen Carol Burnett sits down with her loyal subjects for the audience participation-heavy Carol Burnett: An Evening of Laughter & Reflection on April 19. She’ll talk about her career, answer fan questions and no doubt leave Symphony Hall in stitches.
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Matt and Kim: Matt Miller; Speedy Ortiz: Shervin Lainez; Ben Folds: Allan Amato
Party Pair
Matt and Kim just want to have fun. The Brooklyn duo are known for electric live shows, where whimsical props, old-school hip-hop bass drops and the pair’s unflagging energy bolster sunny indie-pop. We got Matt Johnson on the line before their April 12 stop at the House of Blues behind their fifth LP, New Glow, dropping April 7. // Alexandra Cavallo
WHAT WAS THE FIRST SONG ON NEW GLOW THAT YOU BOTH KNEW WAS GOING TO BE GREAT? “Hey Now” is the first one we did. We’ve been really lucky to have a live show that people seem to really enjoy and come back to. The energy we put on stage is way different than what one might consider an “indie” show. We have no problem with putting a Ludacris song right in the middle of one of our singles. So when we were writing “Hey Now,” we just needed to get what we do on stage and put it on a record. We were making it at my house, jumping around the room, like “Yes!”
SPEAKING OF YOUR LIVE SHOWS, DO YOU FEEL A RESPONSIBILITY TO BE THAT PRESENT AND PUT ON A KICKASS SHOW EVERY TIME? It’s the only way I could see doing it. I’ve seen bands that are great bands, but the most they’re visually into a song is maybe a subtle head bob. I wouldn’t be able to play a show like that. If the crowd isn’t jumping up and down, or crowd surfing, or whatever, I’m just like, “We should go to the next song. I don’t think they’re into this.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY PRE-SHOW RITUALS TO PSYCH YOURSELVES UP? Kim notoriously has a routine where she has a certain playlist—it involves Beyoncé—mostly hip-hop, high-energy songs that she dances to. And you can’t interrupt her. She needs to get through the whole playlist. So basically she’s worked herself into a sweat before she even goes onstage.
YOUR VIBE IS VERY YOUTHFUL, FOR LACK OF A BETTER WORD. CAN YOU SEE YOURSELVES DOING THIS IN 20 YEARS? I don’t know! That’s a question we’ve asked. “In 10 years, Kim, could you still be dancing on an audiences’ hands?” But how old is Iggy Pop? He’s in his 60s? He’s still going for it. So I have no idea—I guess it’s how long the body lets us do it.
No Rest, Just Fest
Rock fests reign supreme in this town, but electro-heads can get their fix at Together Boston, a city-spanning celebration of electronic music entering its sixth year. The May 10-17 festival features big names from across the globe—like Germany’s Mano Le Tough and Brits Sasha and Scuba—as well as workshops, lectures and demos.
Then Memorial Day weekend welcomes biannual blowout Boston Calling back to City Hall Plaza for its fifth formidable installment. The May 22-24 edition locked in Beck (before his Grammy sweep), My Morning Jacket and local alt-rock pioneers the Pixies as headliners of a killer three-day lineup that includes St. Vincent, Tenacious D, Run the Jewels, TV on the Radio and more.
If you like your festing a little more DIY, get yourself over to Rock City on May 30 for Awesome Day Fest, O’Brien’s annual beer-b-q rager. This year the all-day fest has expanded to include Great Scott and Wonder Bar, with a heavy-hitting, all-local lineup.
Big Billings
Belle & Sebastian
On March 30, the prolific indie-pop titans breeze into House of Blues behind their ninth studio album, January’s Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, the Scottish outfit’s first record in five years.
Twin Shadow
George Lewis Jr.’s bedroom project turned symphonic synth-pop experience went big for third album Eclipse, layering massive synths with melancholy lyricism. Hear it live at the Paradise Rock Club on April 3.
Spyro Gyra
A mega-force since the ’70s, this Buffalo-bred quintet, which blends pop, R&B and funk into their smooth jazz, is still bringing the noise almost 30 albums later. And they’ll bring it to Scullers on April 10 and 11.
Earl Sweatshirt
The Odd Future rapper—whose surprise album I Don’t Go Outside, I Don’t Like Shit just dropped via iTunes—hits the ’Dise with frequent collaborator/up-and-comer Vince Staples on April 16.
Ben Folds
Everyone’s favorite cheeky piano-pop king (minus the Five) rolls into Royale on April 24 and the Sinclair on April 25 behind his collaborative LP with NYC instrumental sextet yMusic, dropping digitally this spring.
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Noel is obviously the more talented Gallagher brother—just ask him. The notoriously hotheaded former Oasis guitarist flies into the Opera House with his backing band on June 6.
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Dirty Dancing: Matthew Murphy; Last Two People: Paul Kolnick; Stronger Than the Wind: Courtesy of the artist
Last Men Standing
This winter’s Snowpocalypse could have been much worse. The proof is in The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, playing at American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center on May 12-31. Featuring music ranging from R.E.M. to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the show stars Obie winner Taylor Mac and Emmy and Tony winner Mandy Patinkin, who chatted with us in advance of the world premiere. // Matt Martinelli
HOW IMPORTANT IS VAUDEVILLE TO THE SHOW? We’re using the absolute form of pure vaudeville, meaning song and dance, soft shoes, all those old-fashioned kinds of numbers, the bits and the jokes and stuff.… Our story is about two guys trying to get through the day, and they’re continuously interrupted by the weather and trying to figure out how to get around the storms.
How have current events affected the script? On the first meeting, it was right after Hurricane Irene happened. We said, forget nuclear. It’s all about climate change and the flood, and the world’s washed away and these are the people who are left. We had Taylor coming in on a raft, and Mandy was living in an old vaudeville trunk that had landed on the beach and was half in the sand.
Any reason for choosing the A.R.T.? We both have had wonderful experiences in the past in the Boston area. We’re both fans of A.R.T., and they were interested in supporting the development of this piece and inviting us to perform it. They were actually interested in having us do it before it was to the point of fruition.
DO YOU HAVE ANY FAVORITE MUSICAL NUMBERS FROM THE SHOW? I love them all.… I really ask the audience, as much as they’re able, to try not to hear the songs in the context of which they’re familiar with. To try to listen to it in this story, in this evening that takes place over this hour and 20 minutes. So that if you hear it, and you know it from some other context, try to say to yourselves, “No, no, no, they’re doing this song to tell this story.”
Opera Shows Its Range
Mozart’s Don Giovanni is one of the world’s most-staged operas, but Boston Lyric Opera will add some fresh blood when its new production plays the Citi Shubert Theatre on May 1-10. Up-and-coming Aussie baritone Duncan Rock stars as the title playboy, pursued by mezzo-sopranoJennifer Johnson as the revenge-seeking Donna Elvira. Meanwhile, on May 15-23 at Boston Conservatory, Guerilla Opera offers the world premiere of Pedr Solis, following a fictional character who comes to life and tries to overthrow his author. It’s opera for every taste—and price point: BLO tickets range from $30 to $223, while Guerilla Opera’s are just $15 (and free for students).
Back in Time
There are plenty of ways to time travel from the comfort of a theater seat this season. First up: two standouts set in the 1940s. On April 9-12, ArtsEmerson hosts Robert Lepage for his reimagining ofNeedles & Opium, which riffs on art and addiction as New York jazzman Miles Davis and Parisian filmmaker and poet Jean Cocteau visit each other’s cities in 1949. And from March 27 through May 2, Lyric Stage revives the former Broadway hit City of Angels, a musical that puts a noir spin on the tale of a struggling screenwriter in ’40s Hollywood.
Skip ahead a few decades for the 1960s New York setting of another musical—this one the beloved adaptation of an ’80s Hollywood favorite—when Broadway in Boston brings Dirty Dancing to the Citi Emerson Colonial Theatre on April 28-May 10.
Let’s Play Two!
Playwright A. Rey Pamatmat is emphatic: His two plays hitting Boston this spring—Huntington Theatre Company’s After All The Terrible Things I Do and Company One’s Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them—are completely unrelated. Except, of course, that they’re both playing at the BCA at the same time. “I wonder if anyone will double feature?” he asks. So do we. The first runs May 22-June 21, the second June 4-27, so there are six days when you could catch both shows. One difference between them: their stage of development. Coming-of-age drama Edith has been in production nearly continuously since 2011, while this is just the second production of Terrible Things, a two-hander set during a job interview that has Pamatmat in a hands-on role. “It’s a totally new director and cast,” he says. “I don’t know if I’m going to do any major changes to the script. I’ll just be in rehearsal to make sure they understand everything that’s going on.”
Good Timing
You could follow actor J.K. Simmons’ Oscar-night advice to call your mom—or you could bring her to Mothers & Sons, which opens on Mother’s Day weekend. A 2014 Tony nominee, the Broadway production starred Tyne Daly as a mother attempting to reconcile with her late son’s partner and his new husband; Boston stage vet Nancy E. Carrol fills her shoes in SpeakEasy Stage’s version on May 8-June 6 at the BCA’s Roberts Studio Theatre.
Wonder Woman
If staging a one-woman show wasn’t proof of her mettle, there’s the subject matter of Alice Manning’s Stronger Than the Wind. The former Harvard acting teacher recalls the challenges of caring for her gravely ill newborn son at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, where New Repertory Theatre welcomes her on March 22-April 5.
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Christina Zwart: David A. Lang; The Amida Falls in the Far Reaches of the Kisokaido Road Courtesy of the William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A Woman of Many Parts
Christina Zwart’s art demands a closer look. A map of the world, on further inspection, turns out to be made from 7,000 condoms; a beautiful rose reveals a photo montage of road kill. Global Protection and Rosekill will be two of her painstakingly pieced-together installations on view at WHOLE (in part) on April 1-May 3 at Boston Sculptors Gallery. We chatted with the Wayland artist about the big picture. // Jacqueline Houton
WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS WAY OF WORKING? I think it comes from a lifetime of needing to line things up and put things in neat rows and patterns. I just like things to be really organized! It’s become a way to have things appear to be one thing from far away and another when viewed up close.
WHERE DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION? Every conversation you have, every lyric you hear to a song, everything you see could be the thing that sparks the piece to turn in a different direction. For instance, I originally had a bunch of different titles for my wage gap piece [23, made from 1,400 doctored dollar bills]. The most recent was from this cartoon I’d seen of a man and a woman heading home at the end of the day. The man’s got his briefcase and he’s hunched forward, and the woman’s behind him, hunched forward. He says, “Another day, another dollar,” and she says, “Another day, another 77 cents.” So, I was going to call it Another Day, Another 77 Cents until…. I was looking at this chart of chromosomes. You’ve got 22 pairs that do whatever, and then the 23rd pair is what distinguishes your gender. You have XX for female or XY for male. And while I was looking at that chart, the number 23 jumped out at me, because that’s exactly the amount that is missing in every dollar bill. It was one of these crazy “eureka” moments.
THAT PIECE WILL HAVE A TIE-IN AT THE RECEPTION, RIGHT? Yes! A couple of my son’s classmates started this company called Sweets for Smiles where they make baked goods for nonprofits. I asked them to provide baked goods for the night of the opening, which is April 11. In return I’d have a little table with a donation box, with their logo and a description of what they do, and a sign that says, “Gender equity baked goods: $1 for men, $0.77 for women.” Nobody likes politics shoved down their throat. I think it’s more interesting and makes more of a point if you can be clever about it. I like to inject humor wherever I can.
Can’t jet off to the Venice Biennale?
Us neither. Fortunately, pioneering video artist Joan Jonas, who’s creating the installations for the U.S. Pavilion at the art world’s biggest biennial bash, is a professor emerita at MIT, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center is treating us to Joan Jonas: Selected Films and Videos, 1972-2005. From April 7 through July 5, the exhibit will showcase seven of the SMFA alum’s film and video works, which tackle femininity, fairy tales, sci-fi and ancient sagas.
Made in Japan
Two big exhibits of Japanese art open at the MFA on April 5. Hokusai features more than 200 works by Katsushika Hokusai, including landscapes, witty urban scenes and an early edition ofUnder the Wave Off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), a woodblock print that continues to pop up all over pop culture nearly two centuries after its creation. A different wave prompted the works in In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11, featuring 17 photographers’ responses to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that devastated northeastern Japan in 2011.
Writing on the Wall
Whether they’re printed on T-shirts, projected on buildings or blinking on LED signs, Jenny Holzer’s words can stun like a punch to the gut. The conceptual art heavyweight has unsettled viewers for more than 30 years, starting with works like 20 Inflammatory Essays, a series of provocative 100-word manifestos inspired by the ideologies of figures like Lenin, Hitler and Mao, which she printed on posters and anonymously wheat-pasted across Manhattan, stopping passers-by short with opening lines like “What scares peasants is thinking their bodies will be thrown out in public and left to rot.” Catch that and other major works (including pieces tapping text from U.S. government documents) at Barbara Krakow Gallery, where the Jenny Holzer exhibit is on view through April 25.
A Walk in the Park
The 10-day city-wide Flash Forward Festival closes with a big party on May 3, but the fun doesn’t stop there. For the whole month of May, organizers are letting us get some vitamin D along with our art, bringing outdoor photography exhibits to six shipping containers on the Greenway. Some highlights: Gabriele Galimberti’s Toy Stories, featuring portraits of kids and their prized playthings from India to Iceland; Angélica Dass’Humanæ, which assigns Pantone colors to subjects’ skin tones; and Daesung Lee’s Futuristic Archaeology, a surreal look at the impact of desertification on Mongolia, inspired by museum dioramas.
Hollywood Signs
Thomas Hart Benton was famed for romantic paintings celebrating rural life and the common man, so it might come as a surprise to learn that Tinseltown left a big mark on the Missourian’s work. Opening June 6, American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood explores how stints in the silent film industry lent a cinematic sheen to Benton’s populist paintings, which made him one of America’s most popular artists—till Abstract Expressionist shoved realists out of the spotlight. Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum will host the first major Benton exhibition in a quarter century, showcasing more than 100 works. Meanwhile, over at MassArt, you can hear directly from another artist who knows plenty about Hollywood: Larry Fink, the photographer behind glam books likeThe Vanities: Hollywood Parties 2000-2009, who’ll stop by as part of the Spring Photo Lecture series on April 21.
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