Category Archives: Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Godfather of Carnage: Dance of Death at Malthouse Theatre
The underside of the marriage plot is the marriage-as-blood-sport plot. In 1900 the so-heralded ‘father of modern Swiss literature’, August Strindberg, wrote a theatrical template for the marriage-turned-sour drama called The Dance with Death. In it, an ailing artillery captain and military writer, Edgar, faces off with … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Military Vision: Embracing accelerated change
For artists, the accelerated rate of technological change presents an interesting conundrum. It has always been difficult to make statements about technology that will maintain their relevance for more than a few years, but the Cambrian explosion of contemporary digital technology has amplified this problem. As an … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Artsy and the real world
Removing my shoes in a cavernous, dimly lit room before quietly entering the white-tiled, monastic-like space that houses Monet’s Water Lilies series at the Chichu Art Museum in Japan. Visiting MoMA in New York and happening upon Tilda Swinton sleeping in a glass box. These are not … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Canberra: so hot right now
In 2010 the Fairfax press wondered if Brisbane was Australia’s new cultural capital. Last week on Radio National’s Big Ideas, contributors to the latest edition of Griffith Review, Tasmania – The Tipping Point?, pondered (somewhat ambivalently) whether it might be Hobart. The Lifted Brow are doing … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Can you separate the art from the artist?
Imagine this: Dmitri Shostakovich, the iconic Russian composer, is sitting in a Waldorf-Astoria lecture theatre in New York in 1949. Shostakovich is giving a speech attacking Igor Stravinsky, the famous Russian composer who now lives in America. But it is not Shostakovich who speaks — in fact, … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
After the gas stations: The art of the artist’s book
When Ed Ruscha published Twentysix Gasoline Stations in 1962, the book was returned to the artist, marked ‘Rejected by the Library of Congress’. Ruscha has said that he received no explanation, but it’s assumed that his book, a volume of black-and-white photographs taken along Route 66, … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
The Tennessee torpor: ITCH Productions’ Vieux Carré
Imagine the worst share house you have ever set foot in, multiply its misery by ten and you will have something approximating the milieu of Tennessee Williams’ 1977 play Vieux Carré. If you’ve never heard of it, that may be because it’s from his critically panned late … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Everything you ever loved is hated by someone else
It was time for a letter to the editor, wrote Lisa Hirsch. The New York Times Magazine had neglected to include any classical musicians in its audio collage of musicians who had died in 2012 (save for Ravi Shankar, and ‘you know he’s there for his pop-music … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Home is where the art is
When Edmund de Waal released The Pot Book, fans gathering at the growing intersection of craft and art were rewarded. A compendium of pots from all periods, The Pot Book pairs decorative porcelain vases with simple, cheaply-manufactured plates for use in the home, each given the same … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Life’s Unfamiliarity
Much of modern art aims – ad nauseam, in many cases – to uncover the intrinsic oddness of seemingly everyday experiences. Thomas Demand’s latest exhibition conforms to this template. Many of the photographs in his NGV exhibition depict superficially ‘normal’ scenes, which become more unsettling with each … Read more
