SIDE BY SIDE–LOST LIVES: PAINTINGS BY ED FRAGA An image of serenity anchors the center of Key Cistern Dream #1 (1993): an unclothed man floats on an air mattress in a limpid, cerulean blue pool; a lush tropical landscape can be seen in the background. Whether asleep or just daydreaming, the solitary man looks completely relaxed. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But this pleasant image is only a tiny part of a larger, more somber whole....
In a democracy, art belongs to the people. –Norman Rockwell The Sudbrinks didn’t drive all the way from Wisconsin just to buy a plate. They could have done that by phone; most of the exchange’s transactions are conducted that way. When Myrtle Sudbrink saw from the exchange’s glossy, full-color catalog that “The Cobbler” was the final plate she needed to finish the Rockwell Heritage Series, she could have called one of the exchange’s sales representatives, who would have punched a few numbers into a computer terminal on the exchange’s trading floor....
ROSMERSHOLM The implied conflicts are a sampler of Ibsen’s favorites: the individual versus society, past versus future, anarchy versus the status quo, rumor versus truth, guilt versus “a calm and happy sense of innocence,” man versus woman . . . Hold on now! How could I have overlooked heredity versus environment? To ignore Ibsen’s infantile extrapolation of Darwin is to miss out on some real belly laughs. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
“In contemporary theater we’re seeing a wonderful mix of disciplines,” explains David Petrarca, the remarkable young director currently in residence at the Goodman Theatre. “Interdisciplinary work, while it has always existed, has been historically relegated to the avant-garde. Now a theater audience comes to expect a dance-theater-music performance. All of that cross-fertilization of the arts is tremendously healthy.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Petrarca’s career has ranged widely, both geographically and stylistically, from forming his own experimental theater collective in New York, to serving as assistant artistic director of the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, to directing As Is in its first Washington, D....
No time off for good behavior? According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the average U.S. resident spends more than two years of his or her lifetime behind the wheel. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And besides, Judge Wapner would do a better job. “Percentage of Americans who can correctly name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: 9. Percentage who can correctly name the judge on The People’s Court: 54....
Right on the heels of its impressive original-instrument revival of Mozart’s Idomeneo, the City Musick embarks on yet another quest for authenticity. This time around, however, the task is more daunting; for the magnificence of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, as several superb recordings eloquently demonstrate, seems best served by the modern-instrument, large-ensemble approach. Inspired by Messiah and with a text originally contrived for Handel partly from Paradise Lost and partly from Genesis, this autumnal masterpiece blends simple rapture with contemplative piety in telling the famous biblical story; in its most descriptive passages, it is, as one musicologist has observed, “a kind of sublime journalism....
Francis Coppola’s tragic and worthy (if uneven) conclusion to his Godfather trilogy, which he wrote in collaboration with Mario Puzo, represents a certain moral improvement over its predecessors by refusing to celebrate and condemn violence and duplicity in the same breath, or at least to the same degree. For 161 minutes, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino at his best) seeks absolution for his past sins, and although a cardinal grants it at one point (in a powerful confession scene), the film itself refuses to....
Why do outhouses have half-moons on their doors? Perhaps it’s related to the great high school custom of “mooning”? –Joyce Kehoe, Seattle Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Joyce, kid, level with me: you’ve never actually seen an outhouse with a half-moon cut into the door, have you? Neither have I, despite several decades of camping trips, and I’ll bet the same goes for just about everybody else....
VINEGAR TOM We don’t burn our witches anymore, but sex and satanism still make for a good political bonfire. What tends to get overlooked is the question of why some people are, in fact, drawn to satanism. Some scholarship has clarified the processes by which pagan gods and goddesses were distorted and transformed by the Christian patriarchy into images of evil: for example, the fertility god Dionysus, with his sacred serpents, cloven-hoofed satyr sidekicks, and cult of frenzied female bacchantes, became the witch-seducing devil of medieval Christianity, while the significant role of woman as the vessel through which Satan operates has roots in ancient man’s efforts to stamp out mother-goddess worship....
Even though he’s a terrific pianist and a strong composer, Marcin Januszkiewicz remains an unknown quantity for most Chicago jazz fans. So trust him by the company he keeps. His septet is impressively versatile, and there’s not a slouch among them. The front line boasts Jerry DiMuzio, an always solid saxophonist with miles of credentials, and Ryan Schultz, whose facility on the bass trumpet makes me wonder why more brass players don’t adopt the big horn....
THE MAGIC OF KATHERINE DUNHAM An evening spent with Katherine Dunham–whose works the Alvin Ailey troupe revived this season–is vibrant, boisterously theatrical, and subtly disturbing. We can’t see with the fresh eyes of 40 or 50 years ago (these dances were first choreographed as early as 1937, as late as 1950), but we can imagine how new these dances must have looked then, what an infusion they were to an emerging American dance scene....
LOVE AND ANGER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you’re Stephen Sondheim, you can protest against the corporate takeover of the arts in a song like “Putting It Together,” then turn around and sell it to IBM. The Grapes of Wrath can speak out against establishment forces, but better not do it too loud or AT&T might take your money away. Many artists are like court jesters who insult the ruler but never really threaten his authority....
Luigi Nono, who passed away earlier this year, was an Italian innovator and visionary. In the course of a distinguished four-decade career, he used his mastery of serialism, electronics, microtonality, and the spatial configuration of sound–all major currents of serious postwar music–on an enlightening personal quest for new expressive possibilities. The result is an eclectic body of works ranging from large-scale revolutionary operas to intimate vocal miniatures using the words of Garcia Lorca....
SIDE POCKETS Chicago Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The owner of the pool hall, Mr. Jenkins (the excellent Cedric Young), is old enough to remember when Johnson won the title back in ’08. It would be hard for him to forget–as a result of that victory Jenkins was so severely beaten by three angry white men that he was bedridden for a week....
BARNUM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s a fascinating moment, jubilant and ugly in what it shows and in the way it invites the audience’s involvement and approval. Barnum is filled with such moments, as composer Cy Coleman, lyricist Michael Stewart, and librettist Mark Bramble trace the fascinating career of the man who proudly accepted the title “Prince of Humbugs.” Born in 1810, Barnum started out as a lottery ticket salesman and achieved worldwide fame in the 1840s with his American Museum, whose “exhibits” included the original bearded lady, two “wild men from Borneo” (two black brothers from Brooklyn), actual Indian chiefs (who, having come east to meet President Lincoln, agreed to greet museum crowds without realizing Barnum was charging admission), and the 23-inch midget Charlie Stratton (aka General Tom Thumb); having developed the museum into an international road show, he went into the urban development business before winding up in partnership with circus entrepreneur James Bailey as proprietors of the Greatest Show on Earth....
Visa cards are printed with little holographic doves as forgery protection, and I’ve seen similar holographic images printed on things no thicker than a piece of construction paper. Soon there will be chocolate bars with holographic decorations etched on the surface (this according to Scientific American). How are these little holographic pictures made and how do they fool the eye into seeing depth where there really is none? –Susannah Faulhaber, Alameda, California...
Thanks for the scoop on Dianetics. Now how about Transcendental Meditation? Relaxation I can see. Cleansed thought processes, sure. But levitation? –Anonymous, Greensboro, North Carolina Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Naturally, being the repository of world knowledge that I am, the concept of competitive levitation did not catch me entirely by surprise. I first heard about it in a general way from another old college roommate (Cecil had a lot of roommates) named Thom, who’s been doing TM since the late 60s....
When he arrived in Chicago in 1980, Jerzy Kenar visited a friend who had emigrated from Poland years earlier, a professor at the School of the Art Institute, who told him, ‘Go back to Poland, because America is cruel to artists.’ I could not understand why he was so bitter. But I could not adopt his attitude. I did not want to be an ’emigre artist,’ but an artist in America....
BALLET CHICAGO Three years ago, when Duell assumed the artistic leadership of Chicago City Ballet, he found he’d stepped into a hornet’s nest. Bitter arguments over the company’s direction had forced the departure of founder Maria Tallchief and a number of board members and dancers and the loss of studio space and financial backing. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Duell, a former principal dancer with New York City Ballet, hadn’t moved here to preside over a funeral....
Memorial Day Weekend, 1988 The ground has been warm enough for two months, but this is the first chance I’ve had to dig my plot, number 13 in the Frankie Machine Community Garden. I jump on the rim of the shovel several times; if I’m lucky, I have found a spot in between the stones, bricks, pistons, and plumbing buried just beneath the surface, and I can pry up a small crescent of dirt as dry and hard as plaster....
