Edgar Degas, Young Girl Reading On The Floor (1889)-- Degas is the focus of a solo exhibition at the MoMA “Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty” and is reviewed by Roberta Smith in one of my chosen links of the week. — Edgar Degas, *Young Girl Reading On The Floor* (1889)-- Degas is the focus of a solo exhibition at the MoMA “Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty” and is reviewed by Roberta Smith in one of my chosen links of the week.

Weekly Flipboard and Media Round Up

March 27, 2016

With all the chaos, violence, and sadness headlining the news media locally and around the world this week, it has been an especially important holiday long weekend to spend time with family and loved ones, taking stock of what is important, and what we can all be thankful for. Taking time away from the breaking news is also probably a good idea, and so I hope some of this week's links help provide new perspectives and insights. Wishing you all continuing rest and relaxation on this Easter Sunday and into tomorrow, and hoping that brighter more peaceful days are on this week's horizon.

"Barbara Kruger on Blind Idealism, Trump, and the Brussels Terrorist Attacks"

nymag.com

"A Playable Version of Pong Set Inside a Piet Mondrian Painting"

thisiscolossal.com

"Picasso Was Wrong: How coding is leading the future of arts related careers"

huffingtonpost.com

"I’ve Seen the Greatest A.I. Minds of My Generation Destroyed by Twitter"

newyorker.com

"The Artsy Podcast, No. 2: Art History vs. the Art Market (PODCAST)"

artsy.com

"A Pioneering Net Artist Mourns the Unfulfilled Promise of the Internet"

hyperallergic.com

"The Modern Degas You Haven’t Seen"

nytimes.com

"Quentin Tarantino Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online"

openculture.com

"Patti Smith Reads Her Beautiful Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe About How He Taught Her What It Means to Be an Artist"

brainpickings.org

"How yarn bombing grew into a worldwide movement | Magda Sayeg (TED Talk)"

youtube.com

List of Links (for quicker linking):

Diane Arbus, Boy Reading A Magazine, N.Y.C. (1956). Arbus was one of several photographers featured at the "Outsiders" exhibition I visited at the AGO in Toronto this past week. — Diane Arbus, *Boy Reading A Magazine, N.Y.C.* (1956). Arbus was one of several photographers featured at the "Outsiders" exhibition I visited at the AGO in Toronto this past week.

Weekly Flipboard and Media Round Up

March 20, 2016

Welcome Spring! It was great arriving home this week to a sunny and warm city after the chill of Toronto—there was a great buzz out on the street yesterday as people took advantage of a near perfect Saturday afternoon. I was also happy to get back into my routine at work and meeting with students this week reminded me of all that they have learned and absorbed this semester. There are some especially fantastic year-end projects shaping up in my American New Wave Cinema class and I have been enjoying the critical discussion with my Contemporary Art History students who have visited the Vancouver Art Gallery MashUp exhibition and drawn ideas they have taken from their lectures and seminars to critically assess what they viewed there. As for my Intro to Film students, I have enjoyed listening to many of their recent film picks (I am always adding to my list) and hearing how they have made efforts to really pay attention to aspects of production and design they would have normally ignored or overlooked.

In this week’s media links, I also noted several interesting connections to artists and ideas I have recently lectured about in my courses that are making the news, including: the significance of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photo projects in the 1980’s; Stanley Kubrick’s influence on the American New Wave; and the role of new technologies like virtual reality in revolutionizing art and filmmaking practices. Enjoy the content and have a great first week of spring!

"Fuck the Queen! Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s Son to Burn $7 Million of Punk Memorabilia"

hyperallergic.com

"Virtual Reality Is the Most Powerful Medium of Our Time"

artsy.net

"Stanley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Created)"

openculture.com

"A Major Retrospective Shows Why Robert Mapplethorpe Is America’s Most Adored (and Scorned) Photographer"

artsy.net

"Hollywood Is Not OK With You Watching New Movies at Home"

wired.com

"Trump l’oeil: A Conversation with the Donald’s Portrait Painter"

hyperallergic.com

"Kendrick Lamar vs. Capitalism"

theatlantic.com

"Wachtel On The Arts - Bjarke Ingels (PODCAST)"

cbc.ca

"When Fashion Meets Technology, You Can Wear Your Tweets"

nytimes.com

"Marina Abramović Brings Her 'Method' to a Younger Generation of Performers in Athens"

artnet.com

List of Links (for quicker linking):

The quantity and quality of street art in Toronto is fantastic-- I spent quite a bit of time checking out the area around Queen Street West dubbed "Graffiti Alley" by the locals.

Location| Toronto: From the Street to the Cinema to the Gallery

March 19, 2016

Visiting Toronto is always a bit strange for a Vancouverite. Not dissimilar to the Los Angeles/New York rivalry that exists with our neighbours to the south, there is a way in which the differences between the two cities makes for more of a cultural divide than say visiting another west coast city like Seattle or San Francisco. Then there is the whole insecurity many Vancouverites feel in the face of the larger, historically more significant and globally visible city of Toronto. While this might be changing since the 2010 Olympics and Vancouver’s growing distinction as among the world’s most liveable cities, most born and bred Vancouverites learn at a young age to root against the Toronto Maple Leafs and come to terms with how off the radar Vancouver remains for most Torontonians. Still, I have come to adore Toronto for its vast size, friendliness, and bold in-your-face attitude. This extends to the cultural life of the city, which is rich and full in a very different way than Vancouver. This is a city with many different points of view and creative outlets—a set of characteristics that was well reflected in my recent visit to the city.

Being raised in a city with a very short urban history, it is always a cool experience strolling historic streets like Yonge, Bloor, Queen, and King streets. Many of these places have housed communities dating back to the 18th century and the build up of architectural styles and evidence of past occupants is ever-present. This time around, I paid more attention to the buildings and walls of Toronto, and was struck with the quantity and high quality of street art on both the main streets and in the alleys and hidden niches of the city. This was especially so along Queen Street West which I learned is home to dozens of large street art murals and has a section dubbed “Graffiti Alley” by locals. I was immediately reminded of Brooklyn’s vibrant street art scene I encountered last summer where the local population protects and takes pride in the art form.

Toronto like Vancouver is also an important film city, hosting the high profile TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival, each fall. I have longed to attend this event as both a film studies researcher and lifelong attendee of the Vancouver International Film Festival that happens a few weeks after the Toronto event (yet another way we are sometimes overshadowed on the west coast). For years I have also had the pleasure of being contacted by past film studies students who first solidified their love of the medium after attending VIFF or other local film festivals around Vancouver as part of requirements for my film courses. The closest I could get to this experience in Toronto was by taking in a movie at the wonderful TIFF Bell Lightbox Cinema in the heart of the city. Looking over the listings, I was immediately drawn to Born to Be Blue, a biopic focused on the life of jazz musician Chet Baker. Starring Ethan Hawke and filmed in part around Ontario as a Canadian-UK production, the film was the perfect choice for my first visit to the famed TIFF theatre as it was featured at the 2015 TIFF Festival. The gathered crowd for the Wednesday afternoon matinee was large and engaged—most stayed in their seats right to the end of the credits and continued conversations in their seats, showing the kind of respect for the craft of filmmaking mostly lost at the big box screenings of high budget features.

Official Trailer for Born to Be Blue, starring Ethan Hawke as Jazz legend Chet Baker.

A visit to Toronto would not be complete without a trip to some of its important museums and galleries. Because this was a shorter visit, I chose carefully and decided to focus my attention on exhibitions at the Power Plant Gallery and the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). The Power Plant sits on the shores of Lake Ontario near the foot of the CN Tower and on a long shoreline walk—it is a fantastic space for art exhibition. As one of the city’s best contemporary art galleries, it is also an institution that has great curatorial programming, and I was not disappointed in what I was able to check out. Walking into the space was an experience unto itself as 30,000 life-size black paper cut-outs of moths greeted audiences in a mesmerizing installation by artist Carlos Amorales called Black Cloud taking up the entire length of a long corridor, top to bottom. The swarm was both elegant and sensual while equally frightening and eerie. Another artist that captured my attention was the exhibition of Montreal artist Patrick Bernatchez and his interdisciplinary projects ranging from film, sound, and sculptural works. Titled "Les Temps inachevés (Unfinished Time)," the show featured Bernatchez’s film Lost in Time, which intertwined two seemingly incongruent narratives with incredible visuals. I was also struck with the complexity of the Fashion Plaza Nights sound and object installation that had as part of the final concept for the piece a mechanized object unfurling 104 spools of thread and encasing it around speakers that gradually muffled the sound of the music it played (see images in gallery below).

Later in the afternoon, I walked up to the AGO (a 20-30 minute walk from the Power Plant) and had a chance to see the newly opened “Outsiders: American Photography and Film: 1950's-80's” exhibition. Having spent a good chunk of my graduate program studying and researching the history of photography, especially from North America, I was not sure how much would be new in the show. Honestly, I was also a bit skeptical of the broad focus implied by the exhibition’s description, but was intrigued by the subversive “Outsider” theme and published list of artists on the museum’s website. Suffice it to say I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw at the AGO. Not only was the curatorial vision for the show fantastic—providing sufficient cross-over conversations between and across the range of artists presented, including multiple photo works by Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Garry Winogrand, and Gordon Parks to name but a few—but there was an attempt to intervene and pose critical questions to the audience around issues of agency, authenticity, and authorship in connection to the interrelated media of photography and film. Because of restrictions on photographing the show, I cannot provide documentation of specific photographs and films I encountered, but I encourage those interested to check out the AGO website and video below for more information about these artists and the show. All in all a satisfying visit to Toronto-- a city of multifaceted art experiences.

From the gallery description of the video: ""Outsiders: American Photography and Film, 1950s-1980s" celebrates the artists who changed the image of American life, including Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Danny Lyon, Nan Goldin, Gordon Parks. We invited four Torontonians to sit down with the exhibition's co-curators, Jim Shedden and Sophie Hackett, to discuss what it means to be an insider or an outsider-this is what they had to say."

Douglas Coupland-- the focus of my attention at this week's conference in Toronto-- at his desk reading and writing. Image courtesy of Ottawa Citizen — Douglas Coupland-- the focus of my attention at this week's conference in Toronto-- at his desk reading and writing. Image courtesy of Ottawa Citizen

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

March 13, 2016

Greetings from Toronto! I have been really enjoying my time here out east and have a long list of galleries, museums, and other cultural venues to try and hit up this week as I take advantage of the conference trip. Speaking of which, our Douglas Coupland paper went over nicely at the Gastronomy conference at the University of Toronto, Mississauga and we were able to take in a number of interesting food culture discussions cutting across many disciplinary boundaries and approaches. Strolling around Toronto today, it was fantastic to see the diversity of cuisines and cultures reflected everywhere-- walking smack into the St. Patrick's Day parade was also an unexpected but memorable moment! Much like so many other great world cities, there are surprises around every corner here and I cannot wait to get back out there tomorrow. Happy Sunday night!.... and enjoy this week's chosen links.

"Beauty in Design: Seven Ways of Seeing"

nytimes.com

"A Brief History of “Happenings” in 1960s New York"

artsy.net

"This Is What Happens When You Try to Print Out the Entirety of Wikipedia"

slate.com

"French Street Artist JR Will Make the Louvre's Pyramid Disappear This Summer"

artnet.com

"Do Artists Make the Best Curators?"

observer.com

"The Frank Gehry Story"

nybooks.com

"The Deep-Rooted Expression of Ceramics"

hyperallergic.com

"You Don’t Have as Much Control in Videogames as You Think"

wired.com

"Who Said This: Ai Weiwei Or Andy Warhol?"

artnet.com

"Au Revoir, Internet Cat Video Festival (YouTube)"

walkerart.org

List of Links (for quicker linking):

Vincent Van Gogh, The Novel Reader (1888) — Vincent Van Gogh, *The Novel Reader* (1888)

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

March 07, 2016

What.... is it March already? The time is ticking down quickly this semester and I have been prepping for my final conference of the term set to take place next week at the University of Toronto Mississauga at an event titled "Gastronomy, Culture, and the Arts: A Scholarly Exchange of Epic Portions." I will be co-presenting a paper with Dr. Shelley Boyd on the topic of Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland and his interest in literary and visual art explorations of modern forms of Canadian-ness and identity through evocative and powerful food narratives. This paper will come on the heels of our own symposium on Canadian Culinary Imaginations that we successfully co-organized and hosted a few weeks ago, so we are well primed and ready to carry on the conversations we have been engaged with on this topic for some time now. Interestingly, Coupland is at the New York Armory Show this week and has caused some buzz with both the debut of his de-recognition software and related art projects together with a provocative essay titled "What is the future of art?" that I have included in my list of links this week. Enjoy this and the other media shares below-- have a great week!