Monthly Archives: October, 2005

Chicago artists donate work to benefit hurricane victims.

It has become clear that the cultivation of genuine solutions for this ravaged region require that leaders and the public address complex questions. It is particularly important to understand the G8 in relation to Africa’s tumultuous history. The origin of great conflict is rarely found mixed with current vocals, but can always be found rooted in the twisted politics of the past.

How have artists been represented in mainstream movies?

While race and class in the United States are being discussed in the midst of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, an exhibit at the Chicago Historical Society shows us a part of history that graphically brings up many of the same issues. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, up through December 4 at the Chicago Historical Society, is a haunting look at lynching in America.

The New York Underground Video World of Tom Rubnitz is a gem of the Video Data Bank that you probably won’t see in any of your classes this semester.

On a quiet, pleasant block of Fuzhou Road along the Huangpu river in Shanghai stands a business whose existence would have been unheard of ten years ago, and would have been grounds for imprisonment as recently as twenty five years ago. It is, perhaps, the single greatest monument to a burgeoning capitalist society—a business that services few save the intellectual, the hip, and the wealthy: the contemporary art gallery.

You admit it. You can’t relate to your fellow art students. And why would you want to? They piss you off. If they’re not monopolizing entire conversations with trite ideas or hackneyed explanations regarding their shitty projects, then they’re just obtrusively there, being boring and predictable.

Dan Flavin’s objects demand first and foremost that the viewer be physically present; the viewer’s body, subjected to tens of thousands of lumens, in turn becomes the subject of the artwork. The architecture of the MCA, especially the rounded barrel vaulting, turns everything into ritualized spaces of worship and devotion.

For two weeks, the media was awash with coverage of the hurricane that devastated large parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, exposed a much-ignored level of poverty in the south, and raised the bar for free speech. What follows is a small sample of some of the hilarious, misguided, atrocious, inflammatory and plain old stupid things that columnists, radio hosts, politicians, their wives, policy hacks and other public figures have said in the aftermath of Katrina.

Returning to school this fall, you may have looked up and over at The Art Institute of Chicago’s front facade and noticed that instead of the usual three exhibition banners there is one three-sectioned banner advertising a single exhibition: Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre.

The following is an account of a conversation with Carly Rachal, an SAIC student who has been personally affected by Hurricane Katrina. Rachal is a sophomore with a concentration in photography, and is a native of New Orleans.

Every summer, movie theatres are flooded with a series of blockbuster hopefuls, each one striving to break new records for ticket sales and millions grossed. This summer was no exception. The steamy months from Memorial Day to Labor Day saw the release of films such as War of the Worlds, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Fantastic Four , and The Island . A few, such as War of the Worlds , were modestly successful.