CELEBRATE BROOKLYN GETS VISUAL
by Risa Shoup
You know Celebrate Brooklyn because they're your go-to, outdoor, free concerts in Prospect Park. You were there in the rain for TV On The Radio. You saw Doctor Dog there last summer and were all, "Yeah, I liked Doctor Dog, like, in college, and it's so rad they're, like, playing the bandshell now, you know?" You totally got there mad early for David Byrne, and it was even awesomer than you dreamed it would be. You even (reluctantly) rocked out next to the dude in the Abercrombie polo during Passion Pit, which you had to admit was a damn fun time.
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FILM NOIR HONEY LIZABETH SCOTT AT THE ACADEMY
by Debra Levine
Monday night's edition of the Academy's first-rate full-summer film series, "1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood's Dark Side," now at mid-schedule, enjoyed the tremendous pleasure of a guest appearance by actress Lizabeth Scott.
The heavy-browed, sultry-voiced Scott graced 22 movies, primarily film noirs made between 1945-57 in which she played one of the genre's most babe-o-licious troubled women.
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SARAH McKENZIE: A NATION OF BUILDERS, AND OF ARTISTS
by John Seed
Until about five years ago, Sarah McKenzie, an artist who lives in Boulder, Colorado, painted aerial views. Her work up to that point had been about suburban sprawl, a subject perfectly in tune with the blowing up of the Housing Bubble. Choosing mass architecture as subject matter allowed McKenzie to be a bit of a social anthropologist -- she could quietly hint at her disdain -- and it provided some striking visual material.
McKenzie's aerial paintings, numbered sequentially, have a documentary feeling about them.
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BLAGUE D'ART: EVERYTHING OLD
by Peter Frank
Yesterday's hot items are today's history, obviously enough, but today's history is also today's hot item. I marvel continually at the rediscovery of painters who made a splash three to four decades ago and then eased their way to the margins to allow younger folk the limelight. Sure, there is a wholesale revival of "mid-century modern" going on at the moment, giving new currency to hard-edge painting, pop art, and even abstract expressionism; but even those who had nothing to do with those movements, or whose success came in succession, are getting a new day in court. Not everything old looks new again, but if it's the right age, we can give it a second wind.
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