Florenz Ziegfeld featured tap in his revues, including 50 tap dancers in the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907. Aside from featuring big names like Fred Astaire, he also hired choreographers and dance directors to ensure the form was receiving particular attention. Tap became more popular as a result. Ned Wayburn was a hugely influential dance director. Aside from inspiring Fred Astaire to switch from ballet to tap, he also coined the term ‘tap dance.’
More than 100 rare artifacts are displayed at the American Spirits exhibit, including such curiosities as the original paraphernalia for making moonshine at home, ratification copies of the 18th and 21st Amendments and a collection of Roaring Twenties dresses. The flask collection alone show you how far camouflage was carried to hide the “hooch.” One bar set, “Mr. Dry,” is in the shape of a casket, with the cork-headed corpse concealing a corkscrew body. Even Carrie Nation’s own hatchet from one of many barroom-smashing raids is on display.
New York-based artist Eddie Granger has made it his artistic mission to bring back the somewhat unfashionable idea of optimism. “I’m tired of seeing art that is silent or morbid,” he explains. “Everyone thinks that art needs to be really sensitive or dark. Can we divert from this dark place everyone thinks they need to go? Can we do something different?” Originally from Louisiana, Granger has recently begun to make a name for himself in the New York City art world through his assemblage work formed entirely of cut crayons.
Once a month, on Sunday at 11:30 a.m., art enthusiasts meet at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side in New York for an event called “Secret City.” Led by Chris Wells, the participants enjoy each other’s company, look for support, and worship art. The Secret City is very popular among its followers and has been growing ever since its establishment in 2007. The event takes place in a theater and lasts an hour and a half. Under Wells’ direction, it features a band, singers, a mingling exercise, storytelling, and a discussion about the work of a monthly-changing artist who has been invited to speak. The audience can talk directly with the artist and hear more about his or her creative process.
Shezad Dawood’s Pakistani, Indian, Irish and British roots are the origin of his rich and mixed artistic approach. Dawood’s colorful installations made of neons and tribal textiles laid on canvas translate his interest in exoticism, poetry and joy. “The Jewels of Aptor” comprises a taxidermied bird suspended amongst fluorescent neon hoops. This work refers directly to the 12th century poem “The Conference of the Birds” by Farid Al-Din Attar as well as J.G. Ballard’s novel, The Unlimited Dream Company.
Focusing on the inherent tension between reality and fiction in photography, Mónika Sziládi’s digital collage constructions investigate the complexities of human behavior and group dynamics. Her photographs illustrate the paradoxical relationship between the multitude of possibilities for re-invention and individual expression offered by society along with the pressure for assimilation perpetuated by interactions with new media. Hrvoje Slovenc documents psychologically charged domestic environments that evoke the illusory relationship between fact and fiction. He possesses a deep interest in the many visual languages photography offers.
Entr'ouvert originates in our desire to integrate photographic images of different origins into diptychs, whose nature is to shed new light on their constituent parts. The combination of the images chosen here shows the relation between man and the urban or rural landscape, the relation between ‘internal’ (the intimate dimension) and ‘external’ (the social dimension). It is our wish to avoid whatever narrative might originate from the single images used in the diptychs : there is no story, there is no text.
China is kinetic. Frenetic. A constant barrage of dutiful chaos a billion souls strong. It’s a place where grandma and grandpa still don the blue Mao suits, while their upwardly mobile offspring drive late model Porsche SUVs. Today, the Western world is fixated on China’s economic growth and mixed market economy, but we rarely see or hear about the Chinese people and their daily life.
Brooklyn-based artist Ben Blatt has emerged as one of the most exacting watercolorists in the contemporary art world. It would be hard to describe Blatt’s work without using the word striking. His lush paintings of overgrown terrariums and botanical bell jars open ones eyes to elaborate fantasy worlds full of ornate details, exquisite visual components, and utopian narratives. Blatt’s pieces are evocative of a natural reverie completely encompassing the infinite mystery and fragility of the world around us.
Carl Heyward is an artist and writer living in San Francisco. He has exhibited his mixed-media paintings and artists’ books internationally and has been collected by numerous institutions and individuals including: The Sackner Archives, Califia Books, The New Museum of Art (NY), SF Museum of Modern Art Library, SF Art Institute, SF Academy of Art University, Yale University Art Library, The Australian National Gallery and Sonoma County Museum of Modern Art.
If relatively simple songs are being underanalyzed, we also lose the power in more complicated expressions of protest in songs like Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” The song’s triumphant chorus, which chants “Born in the U.S.A.,” often overshadows its darker verse.
Professional baseball faced a similar postwar influx. More than 500 major leaguers and 4,000 minor leaguers had swapped jerseys for military fatigues during the previous four years. Two former big leaguers, Harry O’Neill and Elmer Gedeon, plus more than 100 minor-league players, lost their lives.
