Category Archives: ART

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’m seeing Robert Moses’ Kin this week end. HuffPost.

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Larissa Archer

Weekends are short and the list of culturally enriching events is long. With all the concerts, readings, exhibits and shows going on, how do you decide what to fit into your all-too-brief respite from the workweek? Well, attending a performance … Continue reading →

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Trio, Francesca da Rimini, and Carnaval des Animaux at SF Ballet for Zyzzyva

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Larissa Archer

Helgi Tomasson, the San Francisco Ballet’s artistic director and principal choreographer, combined elements of modern and classical ballet to create “Trio,” set to Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence. While much of the ballet recalls the aggrandized ballroom prancing one sees so often, … Continue reading →

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Chroma, Beaux, and Number Nine at SF Ballet, for Zyzzyva

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Larissa Archer

The San Francisco Ballet’s Program 2, which finished its run late last month, started strong. Wayne McGregor’s “Chroma” — one of three works making up the program — looked more like contact sport than ballet, an effect strengthened by the … 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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Speak, Memory: Restaging the Past in Todd Hido’s Silver Meadows

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Larissa Archer

The press release for Todd Hido’s recent exhibit Excerpts from Silver Meadows describes it as a “metaphorical reckoning with his own past,” and indeed many of images look as they might in memory or old polaroids: blurry, the colors faded or over-saturated … Continue reading →

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I chatted with artist Michael Brennan for Zyzzyva.

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Larissa Archer

If you’ve dined at any number of swanky Bay Area establishments, you might have unwittingly enjoyed your meal in a restaurant designed by one of the few people who is as well known and well respected for his fine art … 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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SF Ballet’s “Onegin”, Zyzzyva

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Larissa Archer

Often, the thing we love about the work of a great author is the ability to describe a moment, an emotion, some nuance of experience, in such a way that it is immediately recognizable to us, however foreign to our … 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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