The distinguished thing itself. Isn’t that what Henry James, on his death bed, called death? The distinguished thing is a motif of sorts at this Biennale. The U.S., of course, is represented by the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (Though the pavilion doesn’t include his loveliest commentary on mortality, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), two …
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Test Pilot: Pushing Daisies
ABC: BOB D’AMICO
Test Pilot is a semiregular feature this summer sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next fall’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But, premature opinions are why God …
Beuys Will Be Beuys
Okay, I said I would get back to the Joseph Beuys/Matthew Barney compare-and-contrast exhibition at the Venice Guggenheim. A useful show, obviously. The line between them is as straight as a crooked line could be, and I haven’t seen this just-begging-to-be-mounted comparison mounted anywhere else.
In one room there are artifacts from …
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Eaten by the Shark: Can A Show Retroactively Destroy Its Own Goodness?
This week’s endless arguments about The Sopranos reminded me of a question I’d been thinking about lately: Is it possible for a show to have a finale so bad–or for that matter, several seasons so bad–that they retroactively destroy your perception of the show’s overall greatness?
TV shows, unlike movies, are fluid things: your opinion …
That Rob Storr Show — Final Edition
I said a few days ago that I would return one last time to a description of the big international show at the Biennale organized by Rob Storr, “Think With the Senses/Feel With the Mind”. And walk with the feet. It’s a big, big show that begins at the Arsenale and concludes, 100 artists and a mile or so later, at the Giardini. As …
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Big Love Watch: Arc of the Covenant
HBO
Everyone thinks of Big Love as a show about a guy with three wives. They forget that it’s also a show about three women who have two wives and a husband. By their belief system–shared more deeply by some of them than others–Barb, Marge and Nicki are as much married to one another as to Bill.
The second-season opening jumped …
Peggy Guggenheim
I stopped by the Venice Guggenheim, located in Peggy Guggenheim’s former palazzo, to see the joint Joseph Beuys/Matthew Barney show. (More on that later.) I got distracted by her permanent collection. Guggenheim moved to Venice in 1949, after the gradual disintegration of the community of emigre artists who had fled to New York during …
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Joel Stein on The Sopranos: It Was So an Ending!
Because too much discussion of The Sopranos finale is never enough, we’re turning over this space this morning to LA Times columnist and TIME contributor Joel Stein for a Special Guest Post about the big finish. (We’ll offer equal time to Charles Krauthammer just as soon as he sends us something.) Take it away, Joel:
Oh, I felt …
Africa: Best in Show?
I’m not giving out the prizes here, but now having seen most of the official pavilions at the Biennale — and yes, I’ve been here for five days and yes, it takes that long and longer to do justice to this thing — the pan-African group show at the Arsenale is not to be missed. It represents Africans — defined to include Arab North …
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JPTV: All HBO, All the Time…
…at least for today. Tonight is the return of Big Love, a favorite HBO drama that has gotten a raw deal from critics who relegate it to also-ran status.
Another TV critic–I think it was Salon’s Heather Havrilesky–once argued that Six Feet Under got short-shrifted as too “soap-opera,” which is to say, code for “too female.” Which, if …
The Czech Pavilion: Say Please
At the Czech pavilion at the Giardini, you can have one of those experiences where the presentation gets badly in the way of the art. The artist is Irena Juzova. (Apologies, there are two accents in her last name, but as I’ve explained before, there are technical complications to doing accents over letters on this blog that would give …
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John from Cincinnati: Credits Where Credit is Due
The review copies of John from Cincinnati I got from HBO had no opening credits or music. So last night, after the great blackout of ’07, I watched them for the first time, like you did once we all stopped screaming at our TVs.
I don’t have anything to change about my mixed-to-disappointed review. (About which: if TV critics were really …
From Russia With Love
Here’s a nice surprise. Some artists whose work never interested me before show up at the Biennale in a different light — and it’s the same work, more or less. The Russian pavilion features four individual artists and one collective, AES+F, which stands for Tatyana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky and Vladimir Fridkes. …