Mixed Media

'Exquisite Corpus' explores the boundaries of art and the body

Bodies -- inside and outside, observed, exposed, reflected,           hacked to pieces or otherwise taken apart, deconstructed and reconstructed -- are the subject of the student-organized Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art exhibition "Exquisite Corpus: Interacting with the Fragmented Body," through June 15.

The exhibition was curated by the History of Art Majors Society as its annual showcase at the Johnson. The students also prepared an exhibition catalog, wrote essays on the artwork and brought guest artists STELARC and Vlatka Horvat to campus for public talks.

Society members Sarah Humphreville and Stef Hirsch, both fourth-year dual majors in fine arts and the history of art, led an Art for Lunch tour of the exhibition May 1.

Interaction is a key feature, with film and video, Polaroid photography, and Internet-based works among 2-D and sculptural elements.

"In contemporary art right now, there are no limits, no boundaries," Hirsch said. "We wanted to show contemporary work, and show that art can be anything, maybe even vulgar."

The title and concept refer to the Exquisite Corpse, a Surrealist exercise in which three artists independently draw a section of a body: head, torso and legs. In "Exquisite Corpus," viewers are also welcome to play.

Read the full article here.

Listen Again: William Kapell reDiscovered

In the 1940s, William Kapell was classical music's next great pianist.

He won his first competition at age 10. By the time Kapell was in his early 20s, he was famous.

In 1953, he spent 14 weeks touring Australia, playing 37 concerts. But on the return home, he was killed when his plane crashed outside of San Francisco. He was only 31.

By the 1960s, Kapell's recordings were out of print. Only the most dedicated of collectors hunted them down in secondhand stores, and William Kapell was largely forgotten.

But long before TiVo, MP3s or even cassette tapes, there was an Australian music fan named Roy Preston. He avidly recorded concerts broadcast on Australian radio, including several from Kapell's last tour more than half a century ago.

Those recordings have just been issued commercially in a two-CD set called Kapell reDiscovered: The Australian Broadcasts. Washington Post music critic Tim Page has written extensively about Kapell — he wrote the liner notes for the new album — and spoke with Andrea Seabrook about the collection.

Click here to listen to the piece that aired on All Things Considered, and to listen to recordings of William Kapell's final tour in Australia.

Book Review: 'A Step from Death' is full of life

It's hard to know where to start praising Larry Woiwode's new memoir
A Step From Death. Perhaps with the language – perfect, poetic, layered.
Perhaps with the pace – wandering, peripatetic, interrupted, like memory itself. Or perhaps with the clumsy and unrelenting love with which he, as a father, addresses his only son, Joseph, for whom the book was written.

Woiwode and his family operate a ranch in western North Dakota, where the author relishes the physical demands of farming as a balance to the more interior work of writing. A writer, he believes, should also work.

If life on the farm builds up his family through the rigors of chores, sweat, and machinery repair, it also exposes them to accidents and tragedies. Woiwode relates these as he does the other bits of his past – in snippets peppered throughout the book – rather than long tragic episodes, which would have been hard to take.

Yet these bite-size chunks of memory pull the reader through: The first 25 pages are so riveting it's impossible to put this book down. Woiwode starts out on a sunny morning to make hay, turns back to fetch a jacket, and by the end of the morning his life has been changed forever.

Read the full review here.

Copland in Hollywood

Not so long ago, a classical composer who dared to try his hand at film music was treated by his colleagues like a nice girl who'd gone to work in a whorehouse. So it came as something of a shock with Aaron Copland, who had just made a name for himself with his music for "Billy the Kid," Eugene Loring's cowboy ballet, flew to Hollywood in 1939 to score a commercial feature film, returning home six weeks later with $5,000 in his pocket -- the equivalent of $73,000 today -- and his artistic honor intact. "Several people were surprised to see me back in New York," Copland later wrote in his memoirs. "There seemed to be an idea that once one went to Hollywood, he was lost forever to the rest of the music world!"

Copland's part-time career as a film composer is one of the most fascinating chapters in the story of his professional life. Yet few know much about it. Nowadays, of course, it's perfectly respectable for a serious musician to moonlight in Hollywood, and scholars pore over the scores of Bernard Herrmann and Erich Wolfgang Korngold the same way they once sifted through Beethoven's sketchbooks. But none of Copland's half-dozen Hollywood film scores, not even the Oscar-winning one he wrote for "The Heiress," has been recorded in its entirety.

Why has so important a part of Copland's output been so completely ignored? I haven't a clue. Fortunately, four of the feature films for which he wrote music are readily available on DVD, and all of them bear close watching -- and listening.

Click here to read the full article.

Book Review: Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement

"Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing never can bring about reform," observed women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony.

Anthony knew whereof she spoke. She and her peers--the first generation of female activists--had doors slammed in their faces. They were shouted down when they rose to speak. Newspapers mocked them and clergymen called them instruments of the devil.

Even the majority of women took little interest in their efforts. And almost none of them lived long enough to see their cause prevail.

If you're looking for an upbeat, go-girlfriend view of history, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movements is not your book. The story that Sally McMillen tells is poignant, more a tale of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification than of triumph. But it's also a story of courage and conviction, about a small group of people who did, finally, change the world.

Click here to read the full review.

Book Review: The Invention of Everything Else

Nikola Tesla's biography reads like something created by Jules Verne and F. Scott Fitzgerald in a brainstorming session in an alternate universe. During his life, theories abounded about the inventor of alternating current (electricity as we know it) and radio. Some people thought he was literally from the future; others suspected Venus. There was even a rumor that he was a vampire. (It didn't help that at one point Tesla claimed to be receiving messages from Mars.)

Tesla's last days are the subject of The Invention of Everything Else, an affectionate new novel by Samantha Hunt. Interplanetary theories aside, the electrical engineer was actually from a small village in Serbia, where at age 7, he created an engine that was powered by June bugs. As an adult, he showed up in New York at Thomas Edison's factory with almost no money and a letter of introduction from Charles Batchelor, Edison's factotum. It read simply: "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man."

The grown-up Tesla tried to manufacture lightning and once nearly destroyed his New York neighborhood with an accidental, man-made earthquake.

"It is not uncommon for the police to show up at my doorstep, following up on neighborhood complaints of blue flashes or sixteen-foot-long bolts of lightning streaming from the roof," Tesla tells visiting friends.

Also, he talked to pigeons. But instead of turning him into the prototypical mad scientist, Hunt creates a loving portrait – pigeons and all – of a brilliant, charming man who was almost entirely unfettered by practical considerations, self-interest, or universally accepted limits.

Read the full article here.

Contemporary 'Carmen' at the Anderson Center

On Tuesday, April 15, 8 p.m., Binghamton University’s Anderson Center for the Performing Arts presents The St.  Petersburg Ballet Theatre in a uniquely innovative and surreal version of the traditional Carmen ballet.

Carmen, a timeless story of love and jealousy, is the basis of Georges Bizet’s opera of the same title and has had many adaptations including various film versions such as Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film, a dance film with flamenco and even a hip hop version on MTV starring Beyoncé.

Choreographer Yuri Petukhov’s Carmen is a contemporary version with Russian elements in the music and dance. Don José is featured as the principal character and the ballet reflects his inner turmoil.  The music is a blend of a variety of musical styles including jazz and rock through the use of traditional folk instruments and electronic sounds.  Russian influences can also be seen in the fashionable costumes designed by a popular Russian designer. Of special interest are the pointe shoes with heels that were designed just for this ballet and have never been used before.

The St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre was founded in Russia under the management of the People’s Artist of Russia, Professor Peter Gusev in 1966. The current artistic director, Yuri Petukhov, is also a People’s Artist of Russia, a State Prize Laureate of Russia and a Laureate to International Ballet competition. 

Prices: General Public $41; BU Faculty & Staff, $36; Senior Citizens, $36; Students, $21 (Group rates available)

For information and tickets: 607-777-ARTS or visit the Anderson Center's website.

"Traditions In Action" at Hartwick College

"Celebrating the Earth: Traditions in Action" will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 19, the Yager Museum of Art & Culture at Hartwick College in Oneonta and will feature guest interpreters and presenters from the Hawk Circle in Cherry Valley.

The program will feature a series of interactive wilderness education programs, including the Native traditions of boiling maple sap, drum making and use, flint napping, rope making, and beaded necklaces. The program will provide a sense of immersion and reality, connecting visitors with how Native Americans used the materials at their disposal to create objects for use and beauty.

The event will also feature "Containers of Belief," a Yager Museum special exhibition exploring Native American objects made and used by Native people in their everyday lives. The exhibit considers the spiritual dimensions of the showcased objects from creation through use. Activities will take place in The Yager Museum and on Frisbee Field. Refreshments will be served, including foods using ingredients available to Native Americans.

The program has been created by the museum education course, a part of Hartwick College’s Museum Studies Minor. Four students in the class have worked together to create a program that will capture the imagination of their peers and the community. The students have planned virtually every aspect of the project, from creating the program of activities, developing a marketing plan, considering menu choices, and establishing a Facebook page for the Yager Museum on which current activities can be shared.

Hawk Circle Wilderness Programs began in 1989 as a one week camp experience for teens, in the Upper Hudson Valley. After eight years in the Upper Hudson Valley, they moved in 1997 to Cherry Valley where they offer camps and programs focused on making authentic crafts and sharing in wilderness experiences that can awaken a passion for learning, teaching and inner growth.

This program is free to all and is sponsored by The Yager Museum of Art & Culture, the office of Academic Affairs, and the office of Student Success. For more information, visit their website or call The Yager Museum at 607-431-4480.

Telephone:     607-431-4480
Web Site Address:     http://www.hartwick.edu/museum
Email Address:     museums@hartwick.edu

Great Composers & a World Premiere with the Binghamton Philharmonic tomorrow (4/5/08)

Binghamton Philharmonic Composer-in-Residence Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez (pictured, right) and Music Director José-Luis Novo stopped by for a live radio interview today. I hadn't had the opportunity to interview either gentleman before, so it was a treat for me. I could have kept them for an hour, especially on the subject of new music and its place in the concert hall and on our airwaves.

The new music in question today is ...Ex Machina for for Piano, Marimba and Orchestra by Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez , which was commissioned by the Binghamton Philharmonic. Guest performers for the work are marimbist Makoto Nakura and pianist Cristina Valdés.

Sánchez-Gutiérrez also appeared on WSKG TV's Expressions program last night, holding forth on the same subject. You can see that program online.

The concert tomorrow night in Binghamton University's Anderson Center also features Brahms Symphony No. 2 and Beethoven's Egmont Overture (which we inadvertently played twice on WSKG Radio today within the same hour--I played it with the interview then our network classical service coincidentally played it right after the 10am news. I hate it when that happens.)

Interestingly, Sánchez-Gutiérrez work is inspired by the kinetic sculptures of Arthur Ganson, who joins the composer for a pre-concert talk in the Anderson Center Chamber Hall an hour before the concert. The lecture is free for ticket holders.

--Gregory Keeler

www.binghamtonphilharmonic.org

composer Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez' website

sculptor Arthur Ganson's website

This week on Expressions: Art and Soul of the Southern Tier