ROGER BROWN at Phyllis Kind Gallery, through May 6 One picture in the show of new Roger Brown paintings at Phyllis Kind Gallery might give any reviewer pause. Alan Artner, Ironic Contortionist of Irony depicts the Chicago Tribune critic as a circus contortionist, facing the viewer and bent over backward in a kind of circle […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 29
Issue of Apr. 28 – May. 4, 1994
Posted inNews & Politics
Kurt Commentary
Last week’s editorial [Hitsville, April 15] about Kurt Cobain’s life and death was insulting to Rock music fans everywhere. By trivializing rock legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and Prince, the Reader alienated everyone but the trendiest “alternative” fans. And to make matters worse, the Reader idolized Cobain as the savior of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art Facts: Fred Wilson critiques the MCA
Would you invite a stranger to your home specifically to pass judgment on it? Would you allow him to stay for weeks and encourage him to analyze your housekeeping, personal hygiene, entertainment habits, and recreational pursuits–in short, to criticize your “life-style”? That’s what museums ask Fred Wilson to do. Wilson, a New York-based independent curator […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Ultimate Emergency
Dear Reader: Along with thousands of other Chicago-Americans, I appreciated the informative article of the April 15 Reader (“Which Way to the Nearest Fallout Shelter?”). The article has helped us all be a little more prepared in the case of that ultimate emergency. No use in dialing 9-1-1 at that point, right? (Ha ha.) No, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
On a cross-country drive with nothing to occupy my time but fuzzy AM radio and a pocket cassette recorder, I came up with the following questions: (1) In McDonald’s commercials, I can figure out that Mayor McCheese is a cheeseburger and Hamburglar is a hamburger. But what the hell is Grimace? (2) What organs can […]
Posted inMusic
American Poet
JOHNNY CASH AMERICAN RECORDINGS (AMERICAN RECORDINGS) Over his 39-year recording career Johnny Cash’s public image has gradually taken on a larger-than-life gravity, a quality more substantial than what usually results from mindless media exaltation of contemporary celebrities. His poetic songcraft, along with the bedrock strength and humility conveyed in the sheer artless weight of his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Blood Lotus
Jellyeye’s drum performance Blood Lotus–carefully choreographed chaos for eight drummers, ten drums, and three movie screens–is a sort of moving mandala that can transport the audience to another spiritual plane. On a good night watching Jellyeye flail their arms, kick up their legs, and invoke their odd, intense rhythms can cleanse the emotions: slowly but […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Really crappy merchandise. The California-based Real Goods mail-order catalog now offers “Biodegradable PooPets,” allegedly germ-free “cow manure figurines…hand-molded by Amish craftspeople” to decorate the garden and gradually release “nature’s finest fertilizer” into its soil. Your choice of Sluggo Snail ($14), Stool Toad ($12), or Dung Bunny ($12). Economic development, Daley style. “Riverboat gambling did not […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Elizabeth Coyne: Into the Spaces We Breathe
ELIZABETH COYNE: INTO THE SPACES WE BREATHE at A.R.C. Gallery, through April 30 In each of Elizabeth Coyne’s 19 new paintings, on view at A.R.C. Gallery in River West, one or more highly schematic figures, often only faces, are juxtaposed with abstract patterns that cover most or all of the picture. At first the paintings […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Maria Von Trapp
“Maria, Maria, I played one of your daughters in my high school production,” gushes a young girl, her hand thrusting forward a well-thumbed Stagebill. The recipient of her enthusiasm is a gentle, plump elderly woman in a peasant frock. She looks over the Liz Phair look-alike from Palatine. “Ja, zo you did, my child,” she […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Terra Museum Gets Down-to-Earth/Dirty Dealing at the Apollo?
Can Robert Donnelly, scion of the well-known printing family, lead the Terra Museum from incognita to firma?
Posted inArts & Culture
Reel Life: a man of many homecomings
Homecomings intrigue Chicago filmmaker Marian Marzynski. Born in Warsaw, Marzynski, 57, made his debut documentary, A Ship’s Return, in 1963 when the first cruise ship of Polish Americans revisited iron-curtain Poland. In 1981 he made Return to Poland, about his own trip back from the U.S. In Duo Bravo, made in 1992, Marzynski followed a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Faust
The label “progressive rock” didn’t always connote the overwrought, empty virtuosity of Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, or King Crimson. Long before gongs became a staple for rock drummers, German bands like Can, Neu, and Amon Dul were pushing the envelope in risky but usually interesting ways that relied on ideas rather than technical overkill. […]