Category Archives: REVIEWS

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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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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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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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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some thoughts on OWS art

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Larissa Archer

I’m late to this party, obviously, but I’ve enjoyed viewing the art inspired by Occupy Wall Street, and find a lot of it beautiful, provocative, and inspiring, an ideal combination for what is, forgive the now-derogatory term, propaganda. Some images … Continue reading →

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David Linger’s “Narratives in Porcelain at Meridian Gallery, SF Examiner

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Larissa Archer

  On the one hand, works in David Linger’s “Narratives in Porcelain” on view at Meridian Gallery evoke a vision of Russia that is straight David Lean — all bare birch trees, troikas, fur hats and snow-swept promenades.The fuzzy black-and-white … Continue reading →

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