Arts and Culture

I admit, I sometimes pay a premium at a certain dinner theater chain with a lobby-slash-bar designed to look like classic indie video stores of yore. It’s not only the padded recliners and half-decent grub that keeps me coming back. Nope, it’s the rules. Printed on the menu are a list of disruptive behaviors that will get you unceremoniously tossed out—no refunds and no backsies. I’ve never seen it happen. Given what people put down for tickets, dinner, drinks, and/or a babysitter, it’s unlikely many risk blowing the evening. But knowing that the theater takes silence seriously brings serious moviegoers peace of mind. What is a movie, after all, without the all-important dialogue, music, and sound cues? Well, it’s silent film. And even then, when movies were sound-tracked with live accompaniment and dialogue appeared on title cards, people worried very much about distractions. It just so happens that talking and texting (obviously) were the least of early audience’s concerns. For...

Even those not intimately familiar with Jackson Pollock's work know to file him under a category called "abstract expressionism," but somehow his massive paintings — and the layer upon layer of drips that constitute their visual and textural surface — still seem to slip categorization. Some of the painter's fans would surely claim that, more than sixty years after his death, he does indeed still stand apart. But how far apart, really? Evan Puschak, better known as the Nerdwriter , takes on that question in the video essay above, "How Art Arrived at Jackson Pollock." Puschak considers a particular Pollock painting from 1950, "the only abstract work of art that has ever floored me in person as soon as my eyes caught it," and asks why appreciation comes so much more easily for him with it than with other non-figurative works of art. "I don't think the power of this Pollock depends on its place in the history of art." he says. ...

Attention Frida Kahlo tchotchke hounds. You can scratch that itch, even if your summer itinerary doesn’t include Mexico City (or Nashville, Tennessee, where the Frist Museum is hosting  Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection through September 2). Taking its cue from  Doc Marten’s Museum Collection , Vans is releasing three shoes inspired by some of the painter’s most iconic works, 1939’s  The Two Fridas,  1940’s  Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird , and—for those who prefer a more subtly Frida-inspired shoe, 1954’s refreshingly fruity  Viva la Vida. Vans’ limited edition Frida Kahlo collection hits the shelves June 29. Expect it to be snapped up quickly by the  Waffleheads , Vans’ dedicated group of collectors and customizers, so don’t delay. If this line doesn’t tickle your fancy, there is of course an abundance of  Frida Kahlo tribute footwear on Etsy , everyt...

Americans have never like the word “empire,” having seceded from the British Empire to ostensibly found a free nation. The founders blamed slavery on the British, naming the king as the responsible party. Three of the most distinguished Virginia slaveholders denounced the practice as a “hideous blot,” “repugnant,” and “evil.” But they made no effort to end it. Likewise, according to the Declaration of Independence , the British were responsible for exciting “domestic insurrections among us,” and endeavouring “to  bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages.” These denunciations aside, the new country nonetheless began a course identical to every other European world power, waging perpetual warfare, seizing territory and vastly expanding its control over more and more land and resources in the decades after Independence. U.S. imperial power was asserted not only by force of arms and coin but also through an ideological view that made its appearance an...

Folks with a passing knowledge of ukiyo-e , the Japanese woodblock print art form popular in the 17th through 19th centuries, will be familiar with its landscapes, as well as its portraits of courtesans and kabuki actors. But often these prints were educational, demonstrated by these very odd anatomical prints that promote good health as it relates to our internal workings. Long before animated monsters warned us about our mucus-filled chests, Japanese artists like Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865) filled the guts of these men and women with little workers, making sure the human body worked like a functioning village or town. In the first print, Inshoku Yojo Kagami (“Mirror of the Physiology of Drinking and Eating”), a man dines on fish and drinks sake. Inside, little men scurry about a pool wrapped in intestines, stoke a fire under the heart, all the while a scholar keeps reference materials nearby. Down below lonely figures guard the “urine gate” and the “feces gate,” surely one of t...