critical analysis of visual & performing arts
Review: Marie and Bruce
it wasn’t until the cold night air hit me as I left the theater that I realized director Jason Nodler had just given me the theatrical equivalent of a flu shot.
Reviews
Race at Kitchen Dog Theater
David Mamet writes great debates. His characters navigate the twists and turns of a well-formed argument, deflating weaker points, inflating new ideas, poking holes in meaning, until finally the play ends, at which point the audience is left defeated.
Review: Fixing King John
Before they head to Lincoln Center in New York in January, the Rude Mechs delivered the drunken punch to the face that is Fixing King John, at the Off Center.
Review: Bull Game
DALLAS—Site-specific theater can seem better, more “alternative,” edgier than sitting in those uncomfortable green seats at the Wyly...
Review: Carnival Round the Central Figure
Sometimes when a piece of theater challenges me, I look for answers in the play’s title. So soon after seeing the Mildred’s Umbrella regional premiere of Carnival Round the Central Figure, I sought meaning from carnivals.
Koloman Moser: Designing Modern Vienna, 1897–1907
One of the highlights of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s fall season is a small but highly pleasurable traveling exhibition devoted to the work of Viennese design-guru, Koloman Moser (1868-1918), who was trained as a painter but worked extensively in graphics, ceramics, textiles, furniture, glassware, jewelry, and metal.
Moving/Still: Recent Photography by Texas Artists
Lots of soul searching has been done around questions of it means to be a photographer – or an artist whose practice includes photography – in an image-saturated era when few people are ever without a camera close at hand.
Lance Letscher: Pregunta Numero Uno
For the first time in its history, Conduit Gallery has devoted its entire space —two large rooms and a small project gallery — to the work of a single artist.
Localized Histories: Works from the Linda Pace Foundation Collection
Gazing at Linda Pace’s Orange Crush is like flying over a monochromatic landscape of childhood – stuffed Elmos and other Sesame Street characters, Halloween pumpkins, teddy bears, plastic toys, soda cans, baby angels, and boxes of Tide.
Invariant Interval
Invariant Interval is a mesmerizing new installation at UT’s Visual Arts Center (VAC) that challenges viewers to observe three-dimensional art in a relativistic context that includes the invisible but ever-present dimension of time.
Venus in Fur
Taking my seat at the Alley Theatre’s production of David Ives’ Venus in Fur, I didn’t imagine that the play might be appropriate for Halloween.
The Head
While the audience found their seats and engaged in casual pre-show conversation, an enormous decaying head with luminous eyes gazed at them from the stage like a contemporary Olmec.