Category Archives: damn good

The Cult of Beauty: Victorian Avant-Garde at the Legion of Honor, for Art Practical

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Larissa Archer

The temptation to sigh and swoon through The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860–1900, at the Legion of Honor, is strong. The mostly male artists gathered here have borrowed the French poet Charles Baudelaire’s concept of “Art for art’s sake,” … Continue reading →

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I interviewed photographer Fred Lyon for The Rumpus

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Larissa Archer

What does it take to commit to a craft for more than 70 years—particularly one that has undergone the revolutions in technology that photography has? Legendary photographer Fred Lyon worked as a Navy photographer in WWII, spent more than a decade … Continue reading →

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Masked Ball, Venetian Masters, and trippy mashups at the de Young, Zyzzyva

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Larissa Archer

Gerhard Richter’s enormous mural Strontium glowered over Wilsey Court. The mural, made from a collection of blurred photographs representing the atomic structure of strontium titanate (a substance used to make artificial diamonds), might have been interpreted as a bit of a symbolic … Continue reading →

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Joan Baez at Yoshi’s, Zyzzyva

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Larissa Archer

As diverse as the music performed in concerts is, so are the appearances of the audiences. James Mollison documented a spectrum of what he calls the “tribes” of attendees in his photography project and book The Disciples, a rough census of personae … Continue reading →

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The Edwardian Ball got Balmy on the Crumpet, Yo. SF Weekly

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Larissa Archer

San Franciscans are serious about partying. We’ve been to a lot of fancy dress events, and a lot of events that weren’t “fancy dress” per se, but which were treated as such, apparently just for kicks. But the Vau de … Continue reading →

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I’m going to this tomorrow. Are you?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Larissa Archer

So you want to “get fit.”  But prolonged periods of training are dangerous; you eventually find yourself sporting a Borat leotard and kissing your own biceps in the mirror. When you’re finally sick of post-workout Jamba Juice and hating the … Continue reading →

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Paul Madonna’s Everything is its Own Reward, Art Practical

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Larissa Archer

In 1955, the French theorist, writer, and filmmaker Guy Debord defined the term psychogeography as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”1 The art that charges … Continue reading →

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Francesca Woodman at SFMOMA, Huffington Post

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Larissa Archer

There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman … Continue reading →

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Masters of Venice at the De Young, Art Practical

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Larissa Archer

Masters of Venice: Renaissance Painters of Passion and Power, composed of work on loan from Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, provides a small but potent display of both the flights of inspiration and technical advancements that made fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice an … Continue reading →

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I visited Paul Madonna’s home and studio, SF Weekly

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Larissa Archer

One doesn’t expect to visit an artist’s studio and be afflicted with apartment lust (unless one got to visit Monet at Giverny or Damien Hirst’s suite at Claridge’s). But Paul Madonna, we learned thanks to SF Open Studios, lives and works … Continue reading →

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